Yesterday is Bleeding
by Sabari
Summary: A ghost from Daniel's past comes calling, but is quickly put on the back burner when SG-1 is captured during a mission and held prisoner for reasons unknown by an unpredictable and violent race that may prove impossible to communicate with.
1. Wrong Number

_All the talk we ever have heard  
Uttered by bat or beast or bird -  
Hide or fin or scale or feather -  
Jabber it quickly and all together!_

 _ **-The Jungle Book**_ **(Rudyard Kipling)**

* * *

Colonel Jack O'Neill had enjoyed his weekend thoroughly. Over the years he had learned to treasure downtime, to cherish and love it, and miss it when it was gone. As a young man, he had been ambitious and driven, and every second not spent doing something seemed like a second of his life that was totally wasted. But the years had made him wise, and experience forged a more relaxed individual, one who enjoyed many frivolous activities, not the least of which was spending two days fishing.

The pond outside his house had many things in it: mosquitoes, bullfrogs, tadpoles, box turtles, crawdads... but absolutely no fish at all. It took a special kind of person with a somewhat unique set of life experiences to actively enjoy wasting time in such a manner as fishing in an empty pond.

But Jack was also a man who craved action, excitement, and new challenges in life. That was evidenced by the career path he'd chosen when he was just eighteen years old. He'd spent his entire adult life in service of the Air Force, except for the times he had attempted to retire. He'd done a lot of things he regretted over the years, but joining the Air Force had never been one of them.

He was an early riser by nature, and his years of military service had further instilled the trait in him. Still, some days were definitely better than others. Today the sun was shining, he'd had all the fishing he could stomach for one weekend and he was ready and eager to be back to work. SG-1 had a mission scheduled for today, and that meant the possibilities were literally endless. Jack had lost his enthusiasm for a great many things, but stepping through the Stargate and seeing what lay on the other side just never did get old. He had the best job in the world, and worked with the best team in the world.

Colonel Jack O'Neill had never had the dubious honor of attempting to command a more disparate and unruly collection of personalities than the team called SG-1. Of them, only Major Samantha Carter ever consistently listened to him. Teal'c listened when it suited him. Daniel Jackson took instruction about as well as an unbroken colt takes to a bit being forced into his mouth. For all that, they were his team and he loved them, and there was no one he'd rather save the galaxy with than those three people.

Still, working with such people _did_ have its challenges.

For instance, on this particularly fine sunny day, Jack had to stop on the way to work to pick up Daniel.

Two weeks ago, Daniel had taken his car in to a mechanic, and it was _still_ not fixed. It wasn't that Jack minded picking Daniel up on the way to work, it was more that Daniel had very strong opinions and feelings on the subject, and he felt the overwhelming need to share those opinions and feelings with Jack, Carter, Teal'c, General Hammond, Dr. Fraser and really anyone who would listen to him. In fact, Jack was beginning to think that asking Hammond to supply Daniel with a replacement vehicle would be worth it just to make him shut up. The only reason he didn't do so was that he knew full well that -for Daniel- it was never the thing itself. It was the principle of the thing. Daniel's issue was not the inconvenience of not having a vehicle, but the irresponsibility of the people who had failed to repair it in a timely fashion as they'd promised.

Normally Daniel was an understanding, patient man. But ever since the death of Sha're... well Daniel had just been eager and spoiling for a fight. Really, he was coping exceptionally well all things considered. He had found it in himself not to blame Teal'c, and did not withdraw from life as most men would after the brutal death of their wife. Jack recognized and understood the pain his friend was in, and knew that lashing out was his inability to control the emotional turmoil that was raging inside of him. The grief that tried to drown him, the guilt at being unable to save the person he loved most in the world, the fear of it happening again to someone else, the anger at himself, at everyone, at life in general for being so unreasonably cruel.

Daniel had his good days and his bad days, but overall he was being his usual resilient self. One thing Jack had learned not long after they met, Daniel was a survivor; it was in his nature to continue no matter how bad things got, or how dark and big the shadows of life grew.

So no, Jack didn't resent Daniel's occasional flash of temper or redirected aggression. But he was _very_ tired of hearing about that damned car all the way to and from work, and he was hoping that the upcoming mission would distract Daniel enough that he wouldn't do another enthusiastic monologue on his opinion of car mechanics, and _his_ mechanic in particular.

Daniel's loft apartment was the second or third he'd had since he'd joined the Stargate Program. In fairness, the first apartment wasn't his fault. They'd thought he was dead at the time, had a funeral and everything. By the time they found out he wasn't dead and got him back, he had to find a new apartment. Daniel was somewhat less than thrilled, but he took it okay. Jack got the impression that changing homes was not a big deal for Daniel. Jack, on the other hand, had no interest in moving if it wasn't absolutely necessary. Moving was a lot of work, and hardly worth it if you were almost never home. The amount of time he spent off-world, particularly around technologically primitive people, was probably why it didn't bother Daniel that the elevator in his building was out of order, and had been for a couple of months at least. Why that didn't bother him but the car thing did was an absolute mystery.

Usually Daniel was paying attention and noticed when Jack's truck pulled onto the street in front of his apartment and came out rather than making Jack climb the stairs. But some days, like today apparently, Daniel became absorbed in something and forgot to look out the window.

Over time, Jack had learned to take Daniel's eccentricities in stride. The man had a lot of them. Whenever Jack felt himself get genuinely irritated by Daniel's more peculiar behaviors, he reminded himself that Daniel's odd way of looking at the world was what had opened the Stargate in the first place, and also brought the original team home from Abydos. So the man sometimes got a little absorbed by his work and forgot what eating and sleeping were, so what? Once he unraveled whatever mystery had him so enthralled, it usually turned out to be worth it. Even though Jack usually didn't understand exactly what Daniel had uncovered, or found it boring when it was explained to him, he knew Daniel's findings usually had real value to someone in some way.

After a relaxing weekend of fishing, Jack wasn't inclined to be really irritated by Daniel, but he did enjoy messing with his friend. To Jack, that was absolutely the strangest thing about his life since joining the Stargate Program. For sure, Daniel had been the sort of child who got beaten up and excluded because he had glasses and weird interests. And Jack had been exactly the sort of child who would beat up weird little kids. They were both adults now, and though the habits established in childhood weren't easy to overcome, they had sort of managed to get past all that.

Somehow, without really wanting to or realizing when exactly it had happened, Jack and Daniel had become friends. Despite the fact that they couldn't even agree on whether or not pineapple should be allowed on pizza, and that they had each come with no small amount of prejudice against the other's occupation, and that Daniel could really be a huge pain in the ass... Jack knew on some level that he had never had a truer friend than the one he'd found in the geeky little archeologist with the hay fever and disorganized notes detailing his outlandish theories.

Jack arrived at the door to Daniel's loft and knocked. There was no response.

"Daniel!" Jack called, knocking on the door again.

No response. Jack felt a pang of concern. He checked his watch. Surely Daniel wasn't asleep this late, not on a mission day. Other than being asleep, Daniel had no good excuse for not responding. One thing Jack knew about Daniel was that he had very acute hearing, which was part of why he could pick up new languages so easily. There was no way he couldn't hear Jack knocking on the door from inside his apartment. It was big, yes, but not _that_ big.

"Daniel!" Jack shouted, then tested the door and found it unlocked.

That in itself wasn't terribly concerning. Daniel had a bad habit of forgetting what locks were for. When Jack had called him on it, he'd shrugged indifferently and remarked that the Abydonians didn't even have real doors for the most part. Jack had warned him repeatedly that being careless about locking his door was an open invitation to be burgled, particularly since he was often away from his apartment for days or even weeks at a time. Daniel had evidently not taken the scoldings to heart.

Instinct bade Jack move to one side of the door as he opened it, even though he as yet had no strong reason to suspect anything was dangerously amiss.

"Daniel?" Jack inquired into the foyer.

Nothing. Jack moved cautiously into the apartment. The caution was in part due to the fact that Daniel's continued silence had him on edge. But it was mainly because the man's abode was a picture of highly organized chaos and carefully arranged disarray.

Structurally, the loft apartment was a bit weird, with stairs where they shouldn't be, oddly pitched bits of ceiling and walls that just didn't seem to fit the way ceiling and walls ought to. But it wasn't so weird as to be remarkable. However, Daniel's way of decorating his home left one feeling like they were walking into a museum. A tiny museum with too many exhibits and pathways that weren't quite wide enough. Only unlike a museum, most of what Daniel had was not replicas.

Over the years, Daniel had collected hundreds and hundreds of ancient artifacts from around the world. Every piece in his home had some meaning for him, including the rugs he had in hallways and under tables which wouldn't seem strange but for the fact that the floor was mostly carpeted, which meant the rugs were a bit redundant. Knickknacks perched precariously on shelves and antique pieces of furniture Jack didn't even want to guess the names of, all carefully arranged so that an errant hand or elbow could easily brush them and knock them off to their doom. Jack had once remarked that it was an adequate substitute for a burglar alarm, and Daniel had made some remark about priceless artifacts needing to be treated with a bit more respect than that.

To Jack, it was all just massive stacks of books left everywhere, dusty old vases, odd carvings, roughly made statues, hanging tapestries, and the occasional skull (which was always disconcerting and seemingly out of place). Daniel's décor was definitely in the brown section of the color wheel, but that was mostly because ancient artifacts tended to be brownish. It was unclear to Jack whether Daniel even realized colors were a thing that existed. The accent walls of the apartment were a pale blue, but Jack suspected they'd been painted that color before Daniel arrived.

"Hey, Daniel!" Jack shouted after he'd made it down the hazardous entry hall.

"I'm here."

Jack felt the breath he'd been holding go out of him when he heard Daniel's voice. The worry that had been knotting itself in his gut turned into annoyance at Daniel for scaring him like that. But it was mixed with relief at how reassuringly calm Daniel sounded.

Daniel's voice had come from the living room, but it took Jack a second to spot him amidst the clutter. Daniel had moved the chair he used in place of a piano bench over to the window. He was sitting at an angle so he wasn't quite facing the window or the rest of the room, holding a book that looked quite a bit newer than the majority of the books he had lying around his house. It was paperback instead of hard or leather bound, which was unusual for Daniel.

Jack tilted his head to the side so he could read the title of the book on its binding.

"'The Lives of Wasps and Bees'," Jack read aloud, "Taking up a new hobby, Danny?"

"Hmm?" Daniel looked up from the book, his brow furrowed, "Oh. Uh... no, no... actually it's just that there are these wasps building a nest outside my window."

"They do that," Jack said.

"Yes, I know they do," Daniel said, then hurried on, "But I've never really stopped to pay attention to them. Usually because I'm not here until the nest is established. But also they're usually not nesting where I can see them from inside my apartment."

"Since when do you have an interest in bugs?" Jack asked.

"I don't, but I do have an interest in communication," Daniel mumbled as his eyes returned to the pages of the book he'd been reading when Jack arrived.

"With bugs?"

"What?" Daniel looked up, "No, of course not. No. Just, just hear me out."

"I'm listening," Jack said, with no small amount of reluctance.

He never enjoyed being a spectator to one of Daniel's tangents. It always made him feel like a ballet fan watching hockey. Out of place and out of depth. Even though he liked playing the fool, mostly to keep people from expecting too much of him but also to keep them off balance, he didn't especially enjoy _feeling_ like a fool. Daniel made him feel that way almost constantly.

Suddenly overflowing with enthusiasm for his discovery or theory or flu or whatever it was he'd got, Daniel set aside his book and stood up, beginning to gesture somewhat wildly.

"As everyone knows, dance was one of the earliest forms of communication, being best documented in the dance a bee does when it tells the hive where to find nectar to make honey."

"Of course they do," Jack said, wondering who Daniel thought 'everyone' was.

"But what a lot of people don't realize is that they also use another form of communication."

"Of course they do," Jack repeated.

"Pheromones," Daniel said decisively, growing very still for a moment as he looked directly at Jack.

"Excuse me?"

Daniel began to pace and gesture again, "Scent, they use scent to communicate with one another. So too, as it happens, do wasps. Or the social ones at least."

"Yes... the social kind of wasp, as opposed to the antisocial one that stays home to drink beer and watch Wheel of Fortune instead of attending wild frat parties."

"Polistes exclamans," Daniel exclaimed, snatching up the book about wasps and shaking it at Jack.

"Italian?" Jack queried.

"Latin, actually," Daniel replied, seeming slightly thrown off by the question, and he frowned as he waved a hand towards his window, "It's uh... a species of paper wasp, specifically the kind that's building a nest outside my window."

"Of _course_ it is," Jack said, for lack of anything more clever to say.

"When you dropped me off Friday evening, I came in here and saw this wasp sitting on the molding at the top of my window. The next morning, there were two wasps, and they were starting to build this nest. In the afternoon, a third wasp showed up, but they wouldn't let it on the nest. Some other wasps had shown up, but they were chased off. For some reason this third wasp wasn't. The third wasp spent the whole rest of the day sitting near the nest, defending it from other insects that flew by. It acted like it was trying to... ingratiate itself into the colony," Daniel paused for a moment.

"You don't say," Jack remarked, beginning to wish Daniel would go back to complaining about his car.

Like his apartment and his office at the SGC, Daniel's mind was messy and full of things. Scattered bits of theories, fragments of ideas and little morsels of information all floated about the edges of his consciousness in a soup of several different languages. More often than not, the result was that he looked and sounded slightly unhinged whenever these snippets of trivia and fractions of knowledge coalesced into a spark of brilliance so strong it seemed his body could barely contain it. Jack had a feeling he wasn't seeing a flash of brilliance now, but the smoke signals from a half-baked idea.

Daniel hurried on, "The next morning, there's suddenly four wasps there and they're all working on the nest. Now, I've been watching them and I know that this all started with one wasp, and not just any wasp is allowed to help build the nest. So... so I went out and got this book, because I wanted to find out what kind of wasps they were, and how they were communicating."

"Fascinating. Can we go?"

"Don't you get it?" Daniel was beginning to babble in his frantic excitement, "These wasps... they are somehow communicating complex information over relatively long distances through nothing but scent! Jack, we've already encountered races that don't use words to communicate. You remember the planet where they used sounds we couldn't hear, don't you?"

"I remember having a headache," Jack confirmed.

"And," Daniel continued, "You remember Hathor? Pheromones."

"I thought you and I agreed to never speak of that again."

"Jack! This is important. Some day we might encounter a race that doesn't use the type of language that we do on any level, and it's important to realize that there are other ways to communicate without... talking. Do you get that?" Daniel asked, then waited for a response.

"So?"

"So, so... so I think it's a possibility we have to consider."

"Dammit, Daniel!" Jack practically shouted, though he was more bemused than annoyed at this point because it was clear his friend was being completely silly and had absolutely no awareness whatsoever of how ridiculous he sounded, "With all your little brushes and crevice tools and notebooks, you're already carrying a pack as heavy as _you_ most of the time."

"What's your point?" Daniel asked.

"My point, Daniel," Jack said firmly, "is that I'm not letting you carry around some bottles of perfume based on your theory that we might someday encounter aliens that communicate entirely through pheromones! I forbid it!"

Daniel's eyebrows went up at Jack's choice of phrase, and he repeated it, "You forbid it?"

Jack hesitated, then said, "...Yes. Forbid. That's a thing I do."

There was a pause as they silently acknowledged two things. One, Jack was the leader of SG-1 and therefore was in a position of authority. Two, Daniel would pull against the chain of command until he choked himself or broke it when he felt very strongly about something.

"You're gonna do whatever you want, aren't you?" Jack said finally.

"Probably," Daniel replied mildly.

Jack decided to just let the issue rest and changed the subject.

"Daniel?" Jack said.

"Yes, Jack?"

"Do you know what day it is?"

"Uh... well, you're here, so it must be Monday," Daniel answered.

"Which means you spent the entire weekend sitting by this window, watching some wasps."

"Pretty much," Daniel admitted calmly, and then what that meant finally dawned on him and he suddenly twitched, checked his watch and said, "Oh! Right! The mission! I forgot all about that!"

"Yes... that happens," Jack said slowly, "Anyway... we need to go. Your Political Exultations-"

"Polistes exclamans," Daniel corrected.

"Those too," Jack continued without missing a beat, "They will be here when you get back. So come on, time's a wastin'. General Hammond waits for no man."

"He waits for you all the time," Daniel pointed out.

"Well let's not keep the General waiting then," Jack persisted.

Daniel considered this, then nodded, "Okay."

Jack looked Daniel up and down. Even though he couldn't remember what Daniel had been wearing when they left the SGC on Friday, he suspected that it was this particular sweater. The new, shorter haircut Daniel had recently adopted helped to conceal whether or not he'd showered or used a comb that morning, but the beard stubble certainly gave away whether or not he'd shaved since he got home.

"What?" Daniel asked, looking at himself, then at Jack quizzically.

"Nothing," Jack replied, "You look fine."

Daniel frowned and looked skeptical. When Jack and Daniel had first met, Daniel's interest in personal appearance would have been best described as nonexistent. In the last couple of years, he'd shown the beginning of some level of awareness that people responded to how he looked, usually more than what he said. Being an expert in communication, he understood that first impressions were important to relations between people. But he was not conscious enough about his looks to actually notice for himself what it was that Jack saw. Jack preferred it that way. They were going to be late as it was.

"Keys," Jack said simply.

Daniel looked around his apartment, turning in a slow circle, questing after the keys to his apartment. Then he set off in the direction of the room he had converted into an office. Jack couldn't see what he needed an office for. He had one of those at the SGC, and it seemed his entire apartment was overflowing with pieces of his life's work. In fact, the only clear and clean place in Daniel's home was his kitchen, which was spotless (if a little cluttered with cooking paraphernalia. Pots, pans, ladles, spatulas, whisks and so on), almost as if nobody lived here. As little time as Daniel spent at home, that might as well be the case.

Daniel returned from his office a moment later.

"Keys," He said, holding up the ring so Jack could see it.

"Let's go," Jack said, turning and leading the way.

He'd almost made it to the door by the time Daniel made it back to the dining room. They would have gotten away clean had Daniel's phone not suddenly rung. Daniel hesitated, looking puzzled. But then he picked up the cordless phone from the counter-top in the kitchen. Jack returned to the hallway, grumbling impatiently to himself.

"Hello?"

Jack was close enough to hear the gravelly-voiced response.

" _Hello, Daniel."_

He observed as Daniel stiffened, clearly recognizing the sound of the voice on the line. Jack was also close enough to watch as Daniel's pupils visibly dilated for a moment. Then Daniel seemed to remember Jack was there. He self-consciously hung up the phone and set it down on the counter.

"Who was that?" Jack inquired.

There were a lot of languages Jack didn't know. But one he could recognize every time was the unspoken language of fear. Daniel's words when he answered Jack said everything was fine, but everything else about him said it was not.

"Huh? Oh, no one. A wrong number. That's all."

Whoever was on the other end of the line, they had Daniel scared to death.

* * *

 ** _Author's Note: This story is completely written. I will be uploading one chapter per day. It is potentially slightly AU, but not on purpose. It's set somewhere in season 3, shortly after the events of Forever in a Day._** _ **I wrote this for my entertainment, and I am publishing it here for yours. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it.**_


	2. Howlers

It came to Daniel that he had made a mistake.

Just a few short hours ago, the team had arrived off-world. The location's ecology was unusual to find at the other end of a wormhole. The majority of worlds saw the Stargate placed in a temperate region. Sometimes barren deserts awaited, now and then something even more exotic. But Daniel couldn't recall a time when he'd been to a world where the area around the Stargate qualified as a tropical rainforest.

Looking out at the thickly tangled branches, vines, trees and other plant life, Jack muttered, "My kingdom for a pair of hedge trimmers."

When the MALP had sent its first images back, Sam had remarked that insects were probably quite prolific and that some precautions might need to be taken.

At first glance, the world hadn't actually seemed all that interesting. The severe overgrowth of vegetation on and around the Stargate suggested that no civilization had survived. Though the view was unusual to see through the camera of the MALP, there was nothing particularly special looking about this rainforest versus one on Earth... other than the fact that they hadn't been to a rainforest on another planet. That in itself was enough to get the planet _some_ attention.

But what drew SG-1 in particular to the site was what was picked up after there had been a little more looking around by the MALP and a UAV. A couple of miles south of the Stargate, there was a cleared area, surrounding a set of standing stones which were marked with what Daniel recognized as symbols from at least three distinct languages.

The picture resolution was inadequate for him to translate, and the other linguistic experts employed by the SGC all shook their heads at the prospect and told General Hammond that Dr. Jackson was the one best qualified to read the markings on the stones. When necessary, Daniel often briefly attached to teams other than SG-1, particularly when there was nothing on a planet to interest the rest of them.

But Sam had taken a look at the images and pointed out what looked like the vine-plant Linea had used on the prison world to power the Stargate a little over a year ago. Understandably excited about the potential power source, having been unable to find any plant that looked anything like the one from Hadante, Sam was eager for a closer look at what Jack had called Alien Stonehenge.

"It's a lot more than that," Sam had told him, "In jungle like this, there shouldn't be a clear area like what's around those stones. Not naturally. Someone or something must keep the forest from swallowing up those stones, otherwise the jungle would bury them for sure."

"Jack, if there's a civilization there-" Daniel had begun, but Jack had cut him off with a sarcastic remark the nature of which doesn't bear repeating.

General Hammond, however, was sufficiently intrigued to give SG-1 a go.

Daniel's years of archeological experience prior to joining the Stargate Program prepared him for unpleasant conditions. His year on Abydos had taught him more about the effects of heat on the human body than he'd ever wanted to know. But he had discovered that -while not born to it- he was meant for the desert. He thrived in arid conditions, in heat, under sun. Humidity, on the other hand, destroyed him. The moment he set foot on the other side of the Stargate he began having second thoughts.

The humidity was so high that the rainforest was shrouded in mist. It was hot, and as predicted the blood sucking insects found the team almost instantly. In spite of wearing repellent and loose fitting clothing, they were immediately subject to hundreds of bites. Something very like a mosquito seemed especially fond of flying in Daniel's face and getting stuck behind the lenses of his glasses, where it would fly back and forth frantically, pinging off the glass and poking him in the eye repeatedly.

It was at this point that Jack made the remark about hedge trimmers.

Daniel began to formulate a response, but then he sneezed. It came as much a surprise to him as the rest of the team. Dr. Janet Fraser was a brilliant medical doctor. She had managed to find a combination of antihistamines that actually all but eliminated the sneezing fits Daniel had formerly suffered whenever he traveled anywhere. When Daniel sneezed this time, Sam actually flinched and stared at him in surprise.

"You okay?" Jack inquired.

"Lots of pollen in the air," Daniel replied dismissively.

He sniffed, trying to clear his sinuses, noticing as he did so that Sam was looking worried.

"My allergies make me miserable," he assured her, "But they haven't killed me."

"Yet," Jack added unhelpfully.

The worst part about the remark was the truth of it. Allergies could layer on top of each other. In other words, a person allergic to both peanuts and sunflower seeds would have a more severe and possibly varied reaction if they ate both at the same time. If they were also allergic to cats, they would feel much worse if they ate the food they were allergic to while in the presence of a cat than they would with either just the food or only the cat to contend with. Allergic reactions were traditionally viewed as either a runny nose or death, but the reality was that any possible symptom of illness was also a possible allergic reaction. Everything from headaches and fatigue to fever, seizures and fainting (and of course death).

But Daniel's allergic reactions had always mercifully only been a misery in his life, nothing worse. Of course, when pressure built up in his sinuses and he felt a raw soreness at the back of his throat and his vision became worse than usual, it was hard to remember that he was one of the lucky ones.

Still, he had been determined not to let a little personal discomfort slow him down. Long before coming to Cheyenne Mountain that first time, Daniel had chosen a life that saw him traveling all over the world, often into areas rife with wildlife and plants that his system seemed unable to cope with. A little suffering for the work he loved was worth it.

In fact, as Teal'c picked their path through the jungle and the others followed, it seemed to Daniel that Jack was more distressed by his sneezing than he himself was. Jack kept sort of looking at him whenever he sneezed, whereupon Daniel would sniff and excuse himself.

With Jack, it was hard to tell if he was worried about Daniel himself or merely the amount of noise being generated. If there were indeed people here, every sneeze gave them the team's exact location. Jack was probably only concerned with any inherently unfriendly people, but Daniel knew that there were cultures on Earth who counted sneezing as being inexcusably rude, and so he might well be making an unfavorable first impression on an otherwise perfectly friendly people.

Daniel tried to sneeze more quietly.

However, despite Sam and Daniel's assertions that people must be here to maintain the area around the stones, there was no sign of civilization at any point on the arduous journey to the stones. To be sure, there were plenty of signs of life, but all of it that wasn't plant was animal.

Aside from the bugs, there were things in the canopy of trees that shouted alarm calls as SG-1 passed underneath them. Some planets had their own indigenous species, but many of them either had species brought from Earth, or that had made their way _to_ Earth. The things in the trees could be alien, or they could be the sorts of birds, squirrels and monkeys one would expect to find in a rainforest on Earth.

In any case, the only thing about the racket that concerned SG-1 was that it was more likely to pinpoint their location to a potential enemy than Daniel's sneezing. On the upside, Daniel's sneezing was almost utterly drowned out by the screeching and roaring and cackling that was going on overhead.

It wasn't a long way to the stones, but Daniel knew that he would have been wandering in hopeless circles had Teal'c not been acting as guide. The tall Jaffa had an unerring sense of direction. Initially, Jack had tried to institute the common military practice of having a rotating point man, but he'd given it up years ago.

There was an unusual dynamic between Jack and Teal'c. The Jaffa was older than Jack, and had been the leader of Apophis' army. He had commanded many men, and probably for longer than Jack had even been alive, based on what Daniel had managed to get Teal'c to tell him. In short, Teal'c did not take orders from Jack particularly seriously, even though he clearly respected Jack's position of authority on the team. There was a curious duality to him, in that he understood the chain of command and respected Jack, but also did whatever he pleased. And what he pleased was usually to take point, particularly at the beginning of missions when they were scouting unknown terrain.

Jack's frustration at Teal'c's independence was overshadowed by his own respect for the former First Prime as an individual and his unspoken awe of Teal'c's skills. Teal'c was a superior scout and fighter, both in close combat and ranged attacks. He'd proven he was better suited to the point position than any of the rest of them to such a degree that even considering anyone besides Teal'c for the position was laughable.

Daniel would probably never say it to Jack's face for fear of the Colonel making a joke out of it or mocking him, but Daniel recognized and admired the ability Jack had to accept things out of his control. Jack was a military man, and Daniel's opinion of the military was that it was very restrictive and highly controlled. Jack had chosen the field and excelled at it. Yet he had within him the capacity to embrace the mysteries of space with a team he could not fully control.

Daniel knew he himself was a nuisance to anyone trying to work with him because he was independent and single-minded in his pursuit of answers to questions he had. The search for knowledge was all-consuming, and Daniel knew he was at times reckless and foolish. Faced with a fascinating piece of history, Daniel would lose all sight of himself and his own safety and even (to his shame) that of his team mates. That had to be infuriating for a man like Jack.

Yet Jack had not one but two people on his team over which he had very little control. Though he hadn't picked the team initially, he had since made it clear that Sam, Daniel and Teal'c were the people he most wanted to explore the galaxy with, and he would accept nothing less than all three of them. He actively chose to surround himself with people who challenged him and (for sure in the case of Sam) were smarter than he was. It took quite a man to do that. Of course, Jack wasn't as stupid as he pretended to be. It had taken Daniel a little while to realize it, but Jack could no longer fool him with that confused village idiot act he liked to put on.

Three years ago, or even two, Daniel would have thought he had Jack fooled when he said that the phone call that morning had been a wrong number. Now he knew that Jack was just pretending to be fooled either out of politeness or because he really wasn't interested in Daniel's private affairs. Being as Jack had done so much to help Daniel try to get his wife back, the latter seemed unlikely. On the other hand, Jack was not known for his politeness. It was likely he was going to bring it up later, at some time when Daniel was distracted or stressed or otherwise not expecting it. Jack was good at prying information out of people who didn't want to share.

When they reached the stones however, Daniel pretty much forgot about the phone call, and the possibility of Jack bringing it up. He fell into the trance of reading and trying to translate ancient texts. He forgot about his allergies and lost any sense of time almost instantly. He didn't know what Sam was doing with the vines, or what Jack and Teal'c were finding when they scouted the area, and he didn't really care.

All he knew was that the markings down the sides of the stones were a beautiful combination of three languages that were of three entirely separate origins. Here they mingled with mystifying fluidity. Aramaic, something he thought was Latin, and what it took Daniel a few minutes to recognize as a very mangled variation of Goa'uld symbols mixed together to make something almost incomprehensible to the uninitiated. The alphabet for each language was different, so the fact that they had somehow blended together was in itself quite remarkable. Some of the symbols were slightly altered versions of their Earth counterpart, just different enough to make recognizing them difficult.

Daniel wasn't sure whether minutes or hours had passed when Jack came up behind him.

"Well?" Jack asked.

"This is amazing," Daniel mumbled.

"Uh-huh," Jack replied skeptically, looking up and down the stone Daniel was standing in front of.

Most of the stones were six to eight feet high. They were arranged in a circle, a common shape for such things. But what their purpose was, Daniel had yet to determine. He knew Jack was hoping for more than he had at this time. Jack always wanted an instant translation, and he had little interest in historical records. Unless these stones told them the location of a weapon or some other object which could be used to defeat the Goa'uld, Jack really wasn't very interested.

Jack could be annoyingly one-dimensional in his thinking. Simple, Jack liked to call it. He didn't understand that translating ancient documents could take years, and often there were hidden meanings and a person could spend a lifetime following clues left in texts without finding anything. There was always more to it than just a pointing arrow and a sign saying "this way to super weapon". The man was like a cat, patient as hell under some conditions and unable to wait even a second in other situations. By interrupting Daniel in the way that he did, Jack did the verbal equivalent of jumping on a counter-top and using a paw to knock glasses onto the floor to get attention.

"Jack, the people that were brought here... they were probably brought hundreds of years apart, maybe more. From completely different regions. Why would the Goa'uld do that?" Daniel looked at Jack when he started speaking, but by the time he finished he was looking at the text again, "Why would they do that? And the culture that later developed... instead of splitting up or favoring one language over the other, they actually... combined them, and then used whatever Goa'uld they knew to fill in what they didn't have the words for. To do that, they must have overthrown whoever their gods were before the Goa'uld decided to outlaw reading and writing to prevent uprisings. Otherwise they wouldn't have been able to use the Goa'uld symbols correctly because they would never have learned to read them."

"That's nice, Daniel," Jack remarked sarcastically, "But what do these amazing rocks say?"

"I have no idea," Daniel replied with no small amount of delight.

He absolutely loved unraveling ancient mysteries and reasoning out puzzles. His ability to learn other languages had surpassed all expectations. He'd even gone so far as to read works that had supposedly been translated because he found the translations inaccurate and/or nonsensical. Most people found reading dead languages extremely difficult, but Daniel eventually just found it a little boring because it was so easy for him. Opening the Stargate had given him new challenges, new histories to learn, new languages, living languages that were dead on Earth, and new mysteries. A whole new world of the unknown had been presented to him, and he adored it.

Daniel was always at his happiest when he had no idea what he was doing, but a good idea of where to start. He had no idea what any of the texts on the stones meant, but he could read all three languages involved. In time, he knew he could decipher all of this. Daniel was a historian, but unlike most of his type he wasn't as obsessed with the past as he was with the exact moment he was in. At this particular moment, he'd practically forgotten about Earth, the wasps that had so fascinated him all weekend, the Goa'uld, the fact he was on an alien planet, his allergies, even the bugs which were still gnawing on him. He had lost almost all awareness of anything beyond the symbols etched in stone.

Jack, on the other hand, was less than enthralled.

"So how long will it take for you to get some idea?" Jack asked.

There were a lot of annoying things about Jack. But the most annoying was probably his tendency to ask questions for which there could be no possible answer. Having no idea meant Daniel had no idea, not that he was starting to get an idea. He could just make up a number to answer the question, but that had never been his habit.

Daniel might have consciously forgotten about the phone call, but subconsciously he was still rattled. That manifested itself in the irritation in his voice when he responded.

"I don't know. Awhile. Longer if you keep interrupting," Daniel said.

Jack was never one to back off, even when it was advisable. It was one of the reasons he and Daniel couldn't go a day without having a fight about something. Neither of them ever knew to back off when it was good for them. It was this same trait that had found Daniel talking to a room full of empty chairs when he finally voiced his (well researched) opinion that the pyramids were actually much older than everyone thought. The space aliens hadn't originally been part of it, but everyone assumed they were. Daniel had watched helplessly as the room emptied, but he'd kept talking like an idiot because it was not in his nature to back off, especially when challenged.

"Yeah well," Jack observed, "I think the natives are gettin' restless."

Daniel's brow furrowed, "How so?"

"You can't hear that?" Jack inquired.

Daniel cocked his head and listened, gradually regaining his awareness of the world around him. What he heard was the shaking of branches in the trees several yards behind him, and also a strange croaking sound that was oddly familiar to him. It took him a moment to place it.

"Sounds like howler monkeys," Daniel said.

"I'm not going to ask you how you know that," Jack remarked.

Daniel had primarily always been interested in Egypt, but during his years as a student he took any opportunity to travel. At one point, he had found his way onto a research team headed to Brazil. He'd spent several months there, certainly long enough to get used to the black howler monkeys that did their territorial "howling" every morning at the first sign of light. They had big roaring voices, and most of the team had joked that they sounded like King Kong, but -though they were the largest monkeys in South America- they were only about twenty pounds apiece. Though impressively strong, as all apes were, howlers mostly stuck to the trees and never to Daniel's knowledge came into direct conflict with humans.

"Jack, they're harmless," Daniel said, "They're probably yelling at each other."

"It's the yelling that bothers me," Jack told him, "Yelling usually isn't a good thing."

"Howler monkeys do it all the time. It's the monkey equivalent of... stay off my lawn."

"Daniel, have you noticed where we're standing? _This_ _is_ their lawn."

"They're tree dwellers. They're not very interested in what's happening on the ground."

Jack hesitated, frowning. He didn't like that Daniel had a point. He never did. The question was whether he was going to insist on his own way.

"You're sure they're howler monkeys?" Jack asked after a moment.

Daniel obligingly listened again, very intently, "Pretty sure."

"Daniel..." Jack said warningly.

"I'm sure, I'm sure. Okay? Now... back off. Please."

Daniel started to turn back to the stones, but kept a wary eye on Jack, just in case the Colonel wasn't done arguing. Jack continued to look uneasy, and Daniel noticed Teal'c in his peripheral vision also looked uncomfortable. He didn't blame them. Howlers sounded like something from a B-movie horror film come to life. But several months in Brazil had pretty much immunized Daniel to any sense of danger at hearing their calls.

It didn't really occur to him to wonder what howlers would be doing here. The Goa'uld had, like many ancient rulers on Earth, kept exotic pets. When Daniel had met him, Ra had been surrounded not just by slaves, but also cats. Monkeys were pretty commonly given as exotic gifts to rulers, and it wouldn't be surprising at all if some slaves of the Goa'uld had presented them with howler monkeys, which later escaped and survived here. It wouldn't be the first time exotic Earth animals had wound up on an alien world. Daniel was a long way from an animal expert, but this forest seemed like exactly the sort of place for howler monkeys to thrive. He thought so mainly because it reminded him of his time in Brazil, trekking through the forests to find ancient ruins of former civilizations and primitive people that had since been wiped out, and the howlers sure did like those forests.

It seemed like he'd only just returned his focus to the stones when he heard Sam call him by name. If Sam was interrupting Daniel's work, that meant she'd found something she thought would interest him or possibly aid him in his translation work. That made his reflexive tone of voice in responding to her a much more pleasant one than what he'd addressed Jack with.

"Yeah?" he looked up, at sound of his name.

Sam and Daniel had a passing understanding of each other. They both were often involved in complex and difficult work for which no one around them had any understanding. They both knew how disruptive interruption could be, derailing entire trains of thought and forcing them to start over. Sometimes in the heat of a crisis, one of them could be found urging the other to hurry up, but their normal mode of operation was to let each other work in peace.

"Over here," Sam called, "Come look at this."

Curious, Daniel left his open pack where he'd dropped it when he started work and followed the sound of Sam's voice. He found her crouching on the ground behind one of the larger stones. As he neared her, he saw something in front of her that wasn't just part of the landscape.

Sam had pushed off the plants and dirt that had mostly obscured the object. It was gray, about a foot and a half long by the looks of it, and appeared roughly cylindrical in shape. It was metallic, but had the slightly soft appearance that was often a characteristic of Goa'uld devices built using naquadah. The appearance of softness was a complete illusion, naquadah was a very dense, heavy material, and if an object was even one percent naquadah it was virtually indestructible by conventional means.

"That looks like naquadah," Daniel observed.

"And covered in markings I can't read," Sam replied.

By the excitement in her voice, Daniel realized this wasn't just any object, but a piece of technology. Looking more closely, he saw it was covered with symbols. It had panels which -if detached- would probably reveal control crystals inside. Most of the advanced races of the galaxy used crystals of various descriptions to power their technology.

But looking at the outside didn't tell Sam a lot about what this particular object was. She was obviously hoping Daniel might be able to identify it by reading the symbols, or that the two of them working together could do so. At the very least, she wanted to determine how dangerous it might be before they began poking it. She was smarter than most people Daniel knew, because though she was an expert in her field she was not so arrogant as to go messing around with things she didn't understand when someone else might be able to add some insight to it. She also seemed to innately know what Daniel had been forced to learn the hard way: If you don't know what it is, don't touch it.

Sam said nothing while Daniel studied the symbols, but he could feel her impatience. It didn't bother him, because he understood the excitement of discovery, and the frustration at having to wait for someone to do something you didn't understand before being able to get your hands on that discovery and begin to explore it for yourself. After a few minutes, he sat back.

"Well?" Sam prompted.

"I think it's some kind of power source."

"Looks like a bottle rocket to me," Jack observed, peering over Daniel's shoulder.

"I don't think the Goa'uld are particularly into fireworks," Daniel muttered.

"Maybe not, but I'm still thinkin'... explosive," Jack said.

"It's not an explosive," Daniel asserted, "If you don't believe me, ask Teal'c."

"Hey, Teal'c," Jack called, "You know what this thing is?"

Teal'c came over slowly. He took an agonizingly long few seconds to gaze at the device.

"I do not," Teal'c declared impassively.

"See? If it were an explosive, don't you think Teal'c would know?" Daniel challenged.

"Not necessarily," Jack retorted, "There's plenty of stuff Teal'c doesn't know," he paused uncertainly, then looked at Teal'c, "No offense."

Teal'c inclined his head slightly, indicating no offense had been taken.

"I agree with Daniel," Sam volunteered, "So long as we're careful, I'd say this is safe to uncover the rest of the way."

"Yes... but is it safe to take home with us?" Jack inquired.

"I won't know without seeing the rest of it," Sam replied, "Why?"

"Because I don't like the sounds I'm hearing," Jack told her, "And I think we should get back to the 'Gate before they get any louder."

"Jack," Daniel huffed irritably, "They're making contact calls, not-"

He broke off suddenly, listening to the low-note sounds, struggling to comprehend their meaning. One lesson he'd learned on Abydos and taken with him on every mission since: finding the root language was only a fraction of what was necessary to achieve communication. Before that link to the chain of understanding was established, it was important to be able to recognize intent. A commonality between almost every language, Earth-based and alien, that he had learned was that the lower the note, the greater the danger. Growls, barks and whines do not qualify as a language by human linguistic standards, but they are highly effective means of communicating.

Jack was right, the tone of the roaring howls had changed. They were no longer contact calls or territorial displays. They had dropped to a much lower note, one that was unmistakably a threat or challenge. Looking around, Daniel also came to another realization. He had made a mistake. The things in the trees were not howlers.

They were much, much bigger.

"Jack..." Daniel said slowly, quietly, and in as calm a tone as he could manage.

"Yes, Daniel?" Jack picked up on the new wariness in Daniel's tone, and did his level best to match it.

"I think we should go."

"Oh?"

" _Now_."

"Oh."


	3. Like Cattle in a Pen

"I think I may have made a mistake."

Jack, sitting with his back not quite against the thorny enclosure wall, his knees drawn up to rest his arms on, scoffed, "Ya think? You prostrated yourself in front of a pack of baboons."

Daniel was lying on his back, staring vaguely in the direction of the forest canopy. The apes had taken his glasses and, with typical monkey-curiosity, had taken turns wearing them until a fight over custody of the eye-wear broke out between two members of the tribe, who had screeched and bared teeth at one another, charging and mock-charging and grabbing at each other until the fur flew and the glasses clattered to the ground to be buried in the leaf litter the two combatants kicked up. By the time they'd ended their squabble, the apes appeared to have forgotten what it was about and left them there, outside the enclosure unfortunately for Daniel.

"That wasn't a mistake," Daniel retorted, "It was a calculated risk."

"Really? And what sort of broken-ass calculator were you using?" Jack snapped sarcastically.

The risks Daniel was willing to take with his own life -particularly in the holy name of communication with total strangers- drove Jack crazy. He knew though, that in the end it wasn't Daniel's skills as a linguist that made the final difference in most situations, but what he was willing to do in order to accomplish building some kind of bridge over the speech or culture barrier that often interfered with friendly relations.

"They only attacked us because we didn't respond properly to their calls," Daniel said.

"Really?" Jack inquired, venting his pain and frustration on Daniel because he was the most available target, "And how were we supposed to respond? With pheromones like your polite exculpations?"

"Polistes exclamans," Daniel corrected automatically.

Having assessed that neither of them was in the mood for polite conversation, but that they were both more than capable of carrying on an argument, they lapsed into silence.

When they first encountered the way Jack and Daniel interacted, neither Carter nor Teal'c felt they were in a position to intervene. Teal'c was on shaky enough ground without getting in the middle of one of Jack and Daniel's spats. Carter was likewise new to the group, and outranked by Jack. By the time they'd been on the team long enough to feel confident, both of them knew intervention was unnecessary.

It was inevitable. When you got two people together with such strong and opposing views, they would either wind up killing each other or becoming the closest of friends. Jack and Daniel had teetered extremely close to the former, but at the last possible second, Daniel had made a choice that changed everything. At the time, Jack hadn't been in any condition to even think of doing such a thing, and it wouldn't have meant anything at the time because he'd been a broken shell of a man, looking for any excuse, any excuse at all, to die. Therefore it had fallen to Daniel to make the choice. In retrospect, it had taken Jack far too long to recognize what had happened, and what it meant.

But when he finally had, Jack had known that he would never be the same. He wasn't really angry with Daniel now. No, truth be known what Daniel had done scared the crap out of him. Not just because it seemed reckless. Daniel was often reckless. But because it had seemed suicidal, something Daniel in his right mind had never been, despite the fact that at times he'd had every reason to be. That's what Jack was upset about, and Daniel knew it too. Daniel always knew things like that, it was just how he was wired. The fact that he slugged back in the argument said he was also upset, and not badly hurt, if he was hurt at all...

Carter, perhaps motivated by the disappointment of discovering the vines which had initially grabbed her interest were really just vines, had insisted on recovering the device they'd found. She and Daniel had hurriedly unburied it and placed it carefully in her pack, while Jack and Teal'c kept a nervous eye on the monkeys, which by that point had come out to the ends of the tree branches and thus become visible. They were enormous, black, hairy apes, with voices to match. The monkeys had shaken the tree branches hard, jumping up and down and hollering for all they were worth.

Rather than bolt, the team had exited the clearing very slowly and calmly, so as not to provoke the monkeys into chasing them. Unfortunately, their caution was insufficient. The moment they entered the trees opposite where the monkeys were stationed, the howlers gave chase.

Jack had given the order to get to the Stargate fast. Once the monkeys were actively pursuing them, there wasn't much point in going slow. Jack had fired off a few rounds into the trees even though he couldn't see the monkeys once they were in the forest, in the hopes that the sound would frighten them. If it did, they gave no sign of it, continuing to leap from tree branch to tree branch overhead, howling at top volume. They were so loud Jack couldn't hear himself shouting above the racket they were making.

When they neared the Stargate, the monkeys either caught up with them or became bold. From above, they dropped down. The one that landed on Jack hit him like a ton of bricks. Though probably only a hundred pounds in weight, it was terrifyingly strong, strong enough to knock him down and keep him there.

Jack didn't have a distinct memory of what had happened while he was on the ground, but he'd somehow wound up on his back. He'd raised his left hand to protect his throat when the monkey went for it, and it had sunk fangs the likes of which Jack would expect to see on a baboon into his hand.

Teal'c had heard him cry out and had come back for him. He'd whacked the thing over the head with the club end of his staff and helped Jack to his feet. The two of them arrived at the 'Gate in time to see Carter dialing in with Daniel trying to cover her. The monkeys were invisible in the trees and underbrush, and Daniel's attempts to shoot them were hopeless.

"Do you suppose it was something we said?!" Jack had shouted.

Daniel hadn't responded. He was never more likely to lash out than when he was scared, but the silence came when he got past the fear, and reached the decision to face it.

Jack knew Daniel was afraid of a great many things: being abandoned, making a critical mistake, forgetting something important, bodily harm, death... taxes. But one thing he was never afraid of was making a complete fool out of himself in an attempt to achieve communication. Of all the things Daniel found vitally important, his own dignity did not appear to be one of them.

And so when he got one of his brilliant ideas, he did not hesitate to drop down to a kneeling position, making himself look smaller. When he spoke, it was in English, but the sound of his voice was strangely high-pitched. The monkeys were rushing out of the brush at him, but he did nothing to stop their advance. When they reached him, he let them push him over onto his side. He continued to say words in that high, almost keening voice.

Jack wasn't sure what he'd said, something along the lines of how he was no threat to them. To Jack's astonishment, the monkeys were satisfied. They swarmed over Daniel for a few moments, but did not harm him. In fact, the front runners swept over and around Daniel like he wasn't even there, instead coming for Jack, Teal'c and Carter. It was the last thing Jack remembered before waking up in the thorn enclosure to the sight of several howlers fighting over Daniel's glasses.

Like Jack, Daniel had realized they wouldn't have time to complete the dial in and send their IDC before the apes were upon them. Unlike Jack, he had opted not to take a final stand, but to instead simply lay down. At the time, Jack had assumed he'd intended to let the howlers kill him. But looking back over it, he realized Daniel must have had an ulterior motive.

"How did you know curling up on the ground would stop them from trying to make a cape out of your skin that they could wear to your funeral?" Jack asked finally, after they'd both taken a few minutes to cool down and get comfortable with the reality they were currently faced with.

"I didn't," Daniel admitted, "I just... took the chance that if I made a submissive gesture they recognized in response to their aggression, they would have no reason to attack me, and hoped that would buy us enough time to escape."

"So, wait..." Carter said, "You knew that the howlers might tear you apart... but you took the chance anyway."

"Yes," Daniel replied after a moment's thought.

"Are you completely insane?" Jack demanded, angry all over again because he understood the tremendous risk Daniel had _knowingly_ taken with his own life.

"...Not yet, but I have high hopes," Daniel retorted evenly, then continued, "The way howlers work is that they make territorial calls in the morning, establishing their location and range. It's how they avoid fights. If they don't hear a response, they know a territory is ripe for the taking. Instead of seeing us as predators or some other species, they acted as if they thought we were their kind. They expected a response from us and, when they didn't get it, they attacked and tried to drive us away."

"I thought you said they were too big to be howlers," Jack said, remembering something Daniel had said before they'd made their unsuccessful attempt to leave the planet.

"They are, and I don't think howlers build thorn enclosures," Carter stepped in, "But thousands of years on an alien planet, with different weather, food and indigenous species to contend with, the howlers must have evolved differently on Earth than they did here."

"We also know the Goa'uld sometimes conduct genetic experiments," Daniel said, "Perhaps they used howler monkeys at one point, changed them from their natural form to something larger and more dangerous. Whether that was ultimately their intention or not, I don't know."

"Sir," Carter said, catching the fever of excitement from Daniel, "If this was a research planet for the Goa'uld, there could be technologies we haven't even dreamed of, and research computers somewhere containing information that could help us advance years in understanding how Goa'uld technology works. Maybe even decades."

"Actually," Daniel said, "I was thinking that any culture that had mingled three so inherently disparate languages so seamlessly is worth studying," he paused, blinked, and added, "But Sam's point is good too."

"Kids, kids," Jack interrupted, deciding that now was time to make his case, "Don't you think we're getting a little ahead of ourselves and forgetting something very important?" he paused for dramatic effect, and neither Daniel nor Carter tried to spoil it before he concluded, "This planet is full of angry monkeys that want to snack on our delicious flesh. Also, we _are_ in a cage, so it really doesn't matter what technology or culture they have, does it?"

"If they wanted us for food, they'd have eaten us already," Daniel pointed out.

"Do you suppose that's what cattle think in the years before they're turned into hamburger?" Jack wondered aloud.

Daniel sighed unhappily, and admitted, "The man has a point."

"Yes," Jack said slowly, "I usually do."

He looked around, but there wasn't a lot to see. The gathered and interwoven thorny brush that made the enclosure was higher than a man was tall, and so thick there wasn't much that could be seen through it. There was a gate on the far side, near where Daniel was lying. Above, there was a thick forest canopy, with blue -if slightly clouded- sky barely visible between the branches of the jungle trees. In the trees themselves, almost invisible in the shadows made by their thick leaves, there were the howlers, peering down with a mixture of curiosity and hostility. The gate had been open while the apes warred over Daniel's glasses, but there were many howlers gathered who were not participating in the fight, and Jack hadn't felt they had any hope of escape.

Jack looked at his bitten hand. He'd done his best to wrap it with bandages from his first aid kit when he'd woken up, but it still bled and felt like maybe it was broken. The apes had since taken interest in the kit and made off with the kit. They were haphazard in their approach to body searches, taking the backpacks and readily visible weapons that had been used against them, but being little more thorough than that. Since then, they'd taken only what caught their eye, such as Daniel's glasses.

Surreptitiously, Jack slid his right hand down to his boot, and was reassured to find his hidden knife still sheathed there. The apes might be smart enough to build primitive fences, but evidently they didn't yet have an understanding of concealed carry. Jack slid his knife out just enough for Carter to see it, and cocked an eyebrow at her. She revealed that she too still had a hidden knife, carefully keeping it concealed from the howlers overhead in a non-obvious way, so they wouldn't be attracted by her apparently secretive behavior. Teal'c also caught on, but Jack feared Daniel couldn't see well enough to do so, and he didn't want to say anything aloud, just in case the language skills of the howlers were better than they'd been letting on so far.

"So, Daniel," Jack said brightly, as if he and Carter had not just been exchanging deadly secrets, "If not bowing before the Bandar-Log, what mistake do you think is your most recent?"

"Bandar-Log, sir?" Carter inquired with eyebrows raised in amusement, clearly getting the reference.

"I am unfamiliar with that term," Teal'c said, clearly not getting it.

"Bandar means monkey," Daniel explained without getting up, "Log means people."

Teal'c inclined his head silently, though it was unclear whether it was because he now understood what Jack had said, or in appreciative response to Daniel's simple explanation.

"Actually," Daniel said, "It's probably more something like Pessoas de Macaco."

"What?" Jack asked, feeling some joke had just ruffled his hair as it flew over his head.

Daniel sighed, rolling onto his side and propping himself up on an elbow to look vaguely in Jack's direction, "The mistake I made. I thought one of the three languages might be Latin, but it wasn't; it was Portuguese. I should've seen it at the time."

"Easy mistake to make," Jack remarked dryly.

"Not for me," Daniel snapped irritably, "I spent most of my time in Brazil speaking and reading Portuguese."

"Daniel," Carter suggested gently, detecting that Daniel was for once thoroughly embarrassed, "I don't think there's a language on Earth you're not familiar with. Besides, you didn't have a lot of time and you said yourself it was a compilation of three seemingly incompatible alphabets. Under the circumstances, anyone would have a hard time identifying the languages."

"You mean for anyone besides _me_ ," Daniel grumbled, " _I_ know better."

"But doesn't Portuguese use the Latin alphabet?" Carter asked.

"Yes, but that's not the point," Daniel protested.

"Danny," Jack broke in gently but firmly, "I remind you that we are currently _locked up like cattle in a pen._ Now is _not_ the time for bruised egos. We need less pouting and more figuring out how to get out of this mess."

"I'm not... pouting-" Daniel began.

"You _are_ ," Jack interrupted fiercely, "Now stop it."

What was really bothering Jack was that Daniel was right; a mistake like that _was_ beneath him. To Jack, different languages were almost all gibberish. But to Daniel, each language came so naturally that he could slide from one to the other without even noticing or pausing to switch tracks. In fact, he did it with such fluid ease that it had gotten them in trouble on at least one occasion when he smoothly and effortlessly slipped into Russian during a time-travel mishap with the 'Gate. For Daniel, the mistake was anything but minor. It would be as if Jack drew his M9 and held it backward so the muzzle was aimed at himself instead of the target. It was huge, and bespoke a deeper issue. Something was wrong with Daniel. Very wrong. Jack wasn't sure what, but he needed to find out before he found his life hanging by a thread, with Daniel holding the other end of it.

"How are the allergies?" Jack asked.

"I have a bit of a headache," Daniel confessed, "And I can't breathe through my nose. But I'm alright."

"Uh-huh, sure," Jack nodded doubtfully.

"Jack, I'm fine," Daniel insisted, sitting up the rest of the way, possibly in a vain effort to prove it.

Jack didn't respond, knowing that if he did, Daniel would simply argue more vehemently. Jack didn't know a great deal about allergies, but he did know a thing or two about insufficient oxygen to the brain, and the side effects thereof. Daniel might be right that he wasn't in mortal danger from a little sneezing and coughing, but Jack had also known Daniel before Dr. Fraser hooked him up with that witch's brew of antihistamines he took before every mission. At that time, Daniel had been in possession of all the physical prowess of a beached lungfish, and that hadn't just been due to a lack of training, though that _had_ been a not insignificant part of it.

Even so, Jack had a suspicion that something more than allergies was bothering Daniel, even if he refused to admit it. Jack couldn't forget the way Daniel had turned ghostly white on hearing that voice on the telephone. Despite all the life and death struggles they'd had over the years, Jack couldn't think of a time when Daniel had ever been paralyzed by fear as he'd been in that moment. For him, that voice on the line had to be the single most terrifying thing that existed in the universe. Considering how much of that universe Daniel had seen up close and personal in all its gruesome detail, that was saying something. Even the mighty Ra -the first and arguably most powerful Goa'uld they had come face to face with, before they even know what a Goa'uld was- had not frightened Daniel half so much.

Fear, Jack knew, could be a powerful distraction.

But there was a guarded look in Daniel's eyes just now. If Jack so much as passively mentioned the phone call, Daniel would shut him out, that much was guaranteed. Jack knew the only way he'd get past that defense was to bring it up when Daniel wasn't expecting it anymore, or to have a knock-down-drag-out argument and bludgeon his way through. The latter was not a viable option considering the current circumstances. This wasn't the time or the place.

"So," Jack said, deciding to change the subject abruptly, "I think it's safe to say these aren't your everyday escapees from the local zoo."

"No," Daniel replied, looking relieved at the subject change but still wary, "I don't think they are."

"So what?" Jack asked, "Trained monkeys or is this a planet where apes evolved from men?"

Before anyone could think of anything to suggest, there was suddenly a great deal of chatter outside the enclosure, and shaking of the trees overhead. The chattering monkey sounds rapidly rose into piercing shrieks and whistles and what sounded like wordless jeers.

"Oh good, the apes are going ape," Jack remarked dryly.

"Sounds like what they were doing right before they attacked us," Carter remarked.

"No it doesn't," Daniel had stood up and was staring fixedly up at the howlers in the trees that were shouting and shaking their branches, "It's too high-pitched, too soft edged."

"What are you talking about?" Jack asked, having to raise his voice to be heard above the noise.

"Threat calls are low-pitched," Daniel said, not looking away from the monkeys, "That up there? That's fear. Something's coming."

"Oh please let it be Charlton Heston," Jack muttered.

"No, Jack," Daniel said quietly, taking a step back from the gate as he tore his gaze from the howlers above to look at it, "I think you were right when you said Bandar-Log."

"What?" Jack asked.

"Whatever's coming," Daniel said, "I think they're asking it not to attack them."

Glancing upward, Jack realized he'd misread what the howlers were doing up there. All the limb shaking was actually them scrambling to get down from the trees, abandoning grace and caution in favor of haste. Jack didn't need Daniel to explain to him how subjects greeted their rulers. Kneeling and bowing were not new concepts to him, and he recognized those gestures as less respect and more fearful submission. That was part of why he always resisted doing them whenever possible. He couldn't help it, Jack was a born Alpha male, it was just how he'd been built.

Hearing what sounded like the gate being unlocked, Jack stood stiffly, minding the spots where he'd been more heavily bruised. Carter and Teal'c followed his example, staying slightly spread out, eying the gate warily. Though he'd backed away from the gate somewhat, Daniel was still closer to it than the rest of them. Jack preferred to be in front, both to protect his team and to make sure there was never any mistake as to who the commander of SG-1 was, but he knew that this was one of those times he'd have to defer to Daniel's expertise in communication.

Still, when the gate swung open and an especially large, scarred black howler sauntered in on all fours, he couldn't quite resist saying, "King Louie, I presume."

In a blink, the scarred howler had lunged across the enclosure and leaped, going right past Daniel and smacking Jack in the chest hard enough to send them both crashing back and down. Jack hit the side of the enclosure on the way down, and felt thorns ripping into his back and shoulders.

"Colonel!" he heard Carter cry, but several more howlers had poured in after the one that had tackled Jack, and they blocked her path, hooting and shouting in a threatening way.

Jack tried to get hold of the monkey to hurl it away from him, but somehow it slipped out of his reach without ever getting off him. Somehow it managed to evade his hands while keeping its massively fanged maw snarling right in his face. Finally, Jack kicked off the ground and rolled over, trying to land on the monkey. It scrambled out from under him and landed atop him. He felt its paws (hands? Paw-hands?) touching where the thorns had cut him, and it stung like hell. Then he felt its teeth slash across the skin at the back of his neck. He knew when he was beat.

"Alright, alright!" Jack shouted, hoping it might understand his stillness and tone of surrender, since he doubted it could comprehend his words.

The howler mouthed his neck some more, and he felt the tips of its killing fangs. But it didn't bite him again. He didn't need Daniel to say it had been a display of dominance. Jack had mocked the scarred howler, and in front of its followers. It was all but obligated to act. It was an animal, or seemed to be, so talk was out of the question. Instead, it had communicated in the only way that each party knew the other understood.

It probably hadn't been wise to push the howler's buttons, but Jack had to test the waters. He had to know just _how_ far he could push his captors before they brought the hammer down. The answer was not far at all, and it had only taken one of them to bring him to the ground. He did have to give the head honcho a bit of respect, however. The howler hadn't sent his lackeys to do it, and had taken Jack on mano-a-mano. The other howlers had only stopped the rest of SG-1 from intervening.

Another thing Jack had learned was just how fast these howlers could move. The scarred howler hadn't brought him down due to superior tactics so much as superior speed and strength. It had simply come at him too fast and too strong for him to react to fend it off.

Victorious, the scarred howler bounded around the enclosure in easy leaps, hooting and mock charging its own followers, who scattered respectfully before him. Carter, Teal'c and Daniel simply stood still, watching the howler, but at no point locking eyes with it as it paraded about, asserting its superiority to anything and everything that it came across. Finally, it ground to a halt right in front of Daniel.

Daniel didn't so much as flinch when the howler hooted at him, saliva dripping from its bared fangs. But he also did not lock eyes with the howler, instead looking at the ground in front of it. Apparently as a concession to the fact that his height far exceeded that of the howler, Daniel knelt down, bringing his face within inches of the creature's long canines.

The howler lunged forward, grabbed Daniel by the upper arms and shook him, shouting right in his face; its spittle flying at him, and he partially closed his eyes to prevent saliva from getting in them. Otherwise, he didn't cringe from the scarred howler.

"I don't know what you want," Daniel said in a soft tone when the howler shut up for a second.

The howler shrieked at him again, let go of his arms, and then clouted him over the head with the flat of one of its hands. It must not have been a very hard tap, because Daniel wasn't knocked on his ass. He stayed in the position the force of impact had put him in, and looked sidelong at the howler.

"I don't know what you want," Daniel repeated, more softly than before.

The scarred howler snarled, and apparently sent some signal for its followers to start pushing-dragging forcing Daniel towards the open gate by any means necessary.

"Oh hell no!" Jack snapped, getting up.

But the scarred howler turned and snarled loudly, and the monkeys who weren't herding Daniel away closed ranks, blocking Jack, Carter and Teal'c from following.

"It's alright," Daniel said, getting to his feet and letting the howlers urge him away.

"Daniel!"

In response to his name, Daniel only repeated, "Jack, it's alright."

"The hell it is!" Jack shouted, but he didn't try to assault the monkeys.

Carter and Teal'c, taking their cue from him, also didn't put up violent resistance. There was no point anyway, they already knew the howlers could overwhelm them, because they'd already done it once.

After the monkeys had backed out and closed the gate to the enclosure, Carter turned to Jack and said, "I sure hope you're wrong about those cows."

Jack sighed, staring at the gate through which Daniel had disappeared.

"Me too, Carter. Me too."


	4. Communication

Daniel was starting to wish he'd paid more attention to howler monkeys in Brazil when he'd had the chance. Certain rules of communication seemed to be almost universal, though he'd come to understand that what were commonly accepted to be among those rules really only applied to humans. Since joining the Stargate program, Daniel had started taking more interest in animal communication, because what was true across species on Earth was often true of aliens as well. But in Daniel's case, more interest meant slightly more than none, which was what he'd had for most of his life.

Since he sneezed violently whenever he got near almost any animal, Daniel had a kind of antipathy for them, and had spent very little time around even your basic cat or dog. A lack of experience around animals was what had gotten him in trouble with a mastadge back on Abydos. Many times over the course of his stay, actually, and yet he'd never really got the hang of communicating with the ugly beast.

The howlers had herded Daniel away from the enclosure, and into a very large hut made primarily from twigs, sticks and logs. Even though many primitive cultures on Earth had built such structures (some still did) and he'd seen their like on many planets, something about this particular hut struck him as odd. Though artificially constructed, it did not seem... man-made.

While the thorn enclosure had a gate on the ground, Daniel was obligated to climb almost two feet up the side of the hut, which let him get up close and personal with the wood used to build it. The wood seemed soft, flexible, but surprisingly strong as it bore not only his weight but that of the several howlers that were surrounding him and urging him on with pushes, shoves and menacing sounds. There was no distinctly built ladder, and the howlers climbed wherever they wished along the side of the structure, while Daniel made as straight a course as he was able for the opening in the wall.

Because the hut was shaped rather like an overturned bowl, there was nothing for Daniel to climb down the inside, and he simply dropped to the dirt floor. The howlers swung in, clinging to branches woven into the walls and ceiling, wandering upside down and sideways. They seemed surprised and perplexed by Daniel's abrupt descent to the floor.

He had trouble seeing them because the light wasn't great inside the hut, and he was still without his glasses, but it looked like there were perches or shelves or something along the interior walls that the howlers went to and perched on. Unlike humans, the howlers were probably tree dwellers, like the monkeys on Earth, and being on the ground for long was against their nature. So why have a hut on the ground at all? Why have a ground-based thorn enclosure? Why not a tree-house? Most Earth apes lived their lives in trees, and some of them even built nests. Not as elaborately as birds, but nests just the same. Why not _these_ howlers?

Something heavy dropped to the floor and landed next to him with a thump. Familiar with the sound, Daniel recognized it quickly as one of the team's packs, which the howlers had taken. All he could see was a shadowy lump on the floor, and he decided not to move towards it, just in case he ticked off the howlers. Instead, he looked up and around to see which of them had thrown it, and if it had been aimed at him, or just near to him. He located the scarred howler that had attacked Jack, standing half in and half out of the door to the hut through which Daniel had come. He didn't need to see to feel the hooded glare of the creature's eyes as it stared at him, its mouth partially open, showing about a third of the shafts of its massive canines between its lips.

The howler issued a guttural sound that reminded Daniel of a washboard being used as a musical instrument. Except that it was louder, harsher and felt like the sound reverberated in his own chest. For some reason, Daniel was struck by the idea that it sounded almost like a instrument made of bone. It wasn't fair to call it a growl, or a howl, but it certainly didn't qualify as speech either, despite its fierce, almost inquiring note towards the end, a note echoed by the howlers stationed around the hut.

When Daniel had dropped, he'd ended the landing on his knees. He now opted to stay there as he gazed up at the howlers all around him, his mind racing for some response he might give. They acted upset, and seemed to expect something from him, but he couldn't think what it was.

Years ago, long before he'd ever gone through the Stargate that first time, Daniel had instituted a policy: When in doubt, guess, and hope you don't piss them off so much that they beat you up. It had since been amended: When in doubt, guess wildly, and hope they don't kill you.

"We're sorry," Daniel said, actually taking more care with his even, gentle tone than with his words, "We didn't mean to intrude on your forest. We didn't know you were here. We're not here to hurt you."

No sooner had he started speaking than he was drowned out by the hellish noise of the shrieking, howling monkeys, who shook their perches in seeming anger as they shouted at him in tones that suggested obscenity yet lacked the coherent structure of language to properly deliver the sentiment.

Daniel fell silent, and let them screech. There was no point in trying to out-shout them, they clearly had the lung capacity and the numbers to make the effort worse than futile, and all Daniel would get from it would be a sore throat, unless it also made them angry, in which case he could come off far worse.

The excessive sound in the confined space served to make his headache worse, and Daniel wondered if his hearing might not suffer somewhat after this as well. The noise was so loud it felt like the waves of sound were vibrating the ground under him, shaking through his skeleton and rattling the walls.

He didn't need to understand monkeys to understand that this was a unified threat sound. They were all shouting at him together, as if they were viewing him as a predator, or an intruder to their territory. But he couldn't have fled them if he'd tried, because the entrance was still blocked by the scarred howler, who glared at him in silence while the other monkeys roared. It didn't make sense to him that they were shouting like they wanted to chase him away, when they had carefully set it up so he couldn't run.

The howlers were acting very different from how they'd behaved when Jack provoked them. So differently that it almost seemed like they were not even the same creatures at all. They were acting less like animals, and more like people. Carefully thought out irrationality was typically thought of as a human trait. Daniel knew some aliens that had the same weakness, but he'd never heard of monkeys behaving in the same manner. Never heard of any animal doing it.

Or maybe he was misreading the whole thing. Perhaps they were trying to intimidate him into submission, not drive him away. But that didn't make sense either. He'd already submitted to them when they caught him. There wasn't much else he could do, except sit quietly and listen to them, wait for whatever came next, and wonder just what in the hell these monkeys wanted.

Suddenly, the scarred howler let out a hooting roar, louder than all the rest, who fell silent as if on a command. It glared about at the other howlers, and then swung through the opening, and down to the ground. Dust clouded the air around its feet when the howler landed, less than a foot from Daniel.

Now Daniel understood.

The scarred howler was approaching for a more intimate conversation, and would not be as prepared for a fight as it had been in the thorn enclosure. Here, if Daniel did anything untoward, it would not be taken as a challenge for dominance, but the action of an enemy against the clan or troop. The consequences would therefore be far more dire than what Jack had suffered.

"One wrong move and they tear me apart," Daniel said quietly to the evident leader of the howlers, nodding slowly and cautiously, keeping his eyes on the scarred howler, but carefully lowered to avoid a look of direct challenge, "I get it."

The scarred howler grabbed the pack and trundled it closer to Daniel, walking on three legs while dragging the pack behind it with the fourth, seemingly almost carelessly. Then it stopped, dragged the pack forward so that the pack was between itself and Daniel. The scarred howler sat down. It hooted once, quietly and waved a hand at Daniel. Slowly, cautious of his interpretation, Daniel rearranged to a more comfortable sitting position, while the howlers stared at him.

For the first time really, Daniel got a proper look at one of the howlers up close. The howlers had, of course, been much closer when they'd swarmed over him near the 'Gate, but he hadn't exactly been taking careful stock of their physical features. Even without his glasses and in dim light, he could see well enough to notice some things he'd missed or been unsure of before.

One of the more obvious facts was that the scarred howler was distinctly male, and made no attempt at all to conceal his maleness from anyone or anything. If anything, he seemed pleased to show off. It was typical of animals not to be shy about such things, but of course apes had certain human-like qualities that made it seem awkward that they seemed to have no sense of modesty. On the other hand, Daniel was well aware that it wasn't universal in humans either, and he'd certainly spent some time with tribes where the idea of covering up was viewed as almost amusing or even slightly embarrassing.

The scarred howler had the typical furless monkey face, with forward facing eyes surrounded by a protectively bony brow, slit-like nostrils, and a wide mouth with impressively flexible lips. Like howlers on Earth, he had long fur under his jaw like a big beard. A prehensile tail curled around his body as he sat, long enough to wrap around him twice. The fur on his underside was thinner than on his back, and his hands and feet were very nearly hairless. Daniel was surprised to realize he wasn't actually solid black as he'd first appeared. There was actually a patch of red fur that seemed to start about halfway down his spine and continued to the base of his tail. Proportionally, he was much like an Earth howler, with the same long, spindly looking arms and relatively small body. It seemed to Daniel that his head was somewhat larger for his size than an Earth howler's however, somewhat more the shape of a human skull on the top and back.

Though he was the largest of them, the scarred howler was probably only about a hundred pounds or so. But Daniel knew that he'd still lose a wrestling match with even one of these creatures of any size. He'd seen this particular male tackle Jack like the Colonel was nothing. Not many men would ever be able to say they'd done that, and most of them would've been twice Jack's size. But these howlers clearly had the strength of Earth monkeys.

While Daniel studied the howler, the creature seemed to be doing the same with him. The howler got tired of it first. With a soft (for him) hoot, he pushed at the backpack between them. Daniel wasn't entirely sure what the howler wanted. Maybe it wanted him to take the pack. Maybe they were supposed to tug-of-war for it. He didn't know, but he certainly didn't want to fight this thing, so he wanted to avoid ticking it off.

"I'm not sure-" Daniel began, but the howler interrupted him with a harsh growl.

Hesitantly, Daniel reached out with one hand and touched the pack. The howler grunted, seemingly in approval. Daniel pulled the pack closer, and opened the top of it. It was Sam's, and the device they'd found was in the top. Taking a guess, Daniel pulled the object from the pack.

"This is yours?" he inquired, holding the object slightly towards the ape.

The howler hooted at him loudly, apparently not liking something he'd done. Daniel froze where he was while the hooting spread to the other howlers overhead. He did his best to ignore them, to only watch the scarred one. The scarred howler made a hooting-snarling sound, baring his fangs. Confused, but looking for a way to pacify him, Daniel started to withdraw the object. The howlers began to quiet and Daniel dared let loose the breath he'd been holding. Apparently they didn't want their cylinder back.

The scarred howler continued to bare his teeth, though he and the other apes fell silent. Daniel sat back, holding the object that he and Sam had been pretty sure was some kind of technology, wondering if it would be better to put it down. So far he wasn't doing very well at guessing what the howlers wanted. But the scarred howler _had_ shoved the pack at him. If the howler had wanted the device, surely he could have taken it for himself, but Daniel had assumed maybe the expectation was for him to return the object he and his people had taken. Daniel knew something about symbolic gestures, and hand returning a stolen object to its owner was often such a gesture. Evidently that wasn't what the howlers wanted. If they didn't want Daniel to handle the object, why thrust it at him to begin with? With that question in mind, Daniel couldn't quite see his way clear to putting it down.

The scarred howler growled again, low, quiet, and the others didn't echo it. Daniel realized he'd been so busy watching the howler's face, and trying not to look at the monkeys ranged around the hut, that he'd missed the obvious. The scarred howler was digging at the dirt with the fingers of one hand.

Now he'd noticed it, Daniel watched to see if anything would come of it. He faintly recalled that there had been studies concerning written communication in apes. He couldn't quite remember the details as he'd not been really interested at the time, and so many other interesting things had happened since he'd read the article, but of course one of his go-to methods of communication was drawn pictures.

But after watching for almost a minute, he saw nothing that even started to look like anything. It just looked like random digging. Yet it did not escape his attention that none of the howlers had interfered with his quiet observation, or tried to make him do something else. When he looked up at the face of the scarred howler, it seemed as if the creature was staring at him in puzzled concentration.

It almost struck him as funny, because the scarred howler looked as if he too had expected some sort of communication to take place, but somehow nothing had happened. Daniel decided to risk laying the cylinder aside, and tried his hand at drawing a picture. He decided to start with the simple concept of "you and me," drawing a stick figure human, and a monkey (mainly differentiated by having a tail).

The scarred howler watched this, and listened patiently while Daniel gestured at the human stick figure and himself, and tried to verbally explain the idea that the picture represented him, and that the other one represented the ape. But there didn't appear to be comprehension. In fact, the look in the howler's eyes as Daniel struggled to get the concept across was almost pitying, the way Daniel might look at a simpleton trying to achieve a level of communication beyond his means.

Finally, after the third or fourth time Daniel revised his dirt drawings to try and improve them, the howler reached out and smacked his hands away with surprising gentleness. The scarred howler then began to dig in the dirt as before. Daniel again tried to discern some sort of pattern or meaning to it, but it just looked like digging a little hole in the ground, and there were no sounds or movements accompanying it to indicate what the scratched out hole was meant to represent.

"Okay, not pictures," Daniel sighed, shaking his head.

The scarred howler sat back and snorted, then licked its dirty fingers. Daniel tried not to imagine how gritty it would feel if he did that, and hoped the howler didn't expect him to lick his own fingers.

"What about the alphabet?" Daniel inquired.

He knew that was more than a long shot, it was grasping at straws, but he had to start _somewhere_ , and the howler seemed interested in digging in the dirt, and in the device itself. Daniel decided to scratch out the three alphabets on the object to see if he could get a reaction, and then go from there.

The howler watched quietly, periodically licking his fingers again or scratching himself. The monkeys above and around leaned and peered down, trying to see past Daniel to get a look at what he was doing.

Finishing the first alphabet, Daniel sat back and gestured to it. The howler looked at it, then looked at Daniel. Shrugging, Daniel started work on the second, then the third alphabet. All the while, the scarred howler watched, but didn't seem to comprehend what Daniel was trying to do.

"Of course," Daniel said as he finished, "the letters aren't exactly interchangeable." the three alphabets didn't even have the same number of letters.

The scarred howler grunted and picked up the cylinder. He hooted once, and threw it at Daniel. The toss was unexpected and the device threw more awkwardly than Daniel would have thought the howler capable of. Even aside from the other factors, Daniel couldn't see well enough to catch a tossed baseball with any degree of regularity without his glasses. Consequently, the device smacked him in the arm and bounced off.

This caused quite a stir in the howlers overhead. Being monkeys, they were probably extremely dexterous and coordinated, had good vision and fast reflexes. They tittered and chattered among one another, as if each was asking his neighbor what this odd turn of events might mean.

The scarred howler leaned forward, and waved an arm in Daniel's face. Daniel flinched and blinked in response to this action, and the scarred howler sat back, evidently confused.

"I can see," Daniel said, "Just not very well without my glasses."

He used his fingers to try and mime glasses, unaware that Jack had once done the exact same thing, years ago on Abydos, when he'd been looking for Daniel. Daniel didn't get the same response as Jack had, but it was about as productive an exercise. The scarred howler watched him do it, then snarled until he stopped, perhaps deciding it might be an offensive gesture of some kind.

It was frustrating. By all appearances, these howlers had _some_ kind of language. Certainly they were far more advanced than any of the Earth's monkeys. The attempt to communicate couldn't be overlooked, nor the fact that Daniel had actually succeeded once, conveying to them that he didn't want to fight. But aside from that, he was so far getting nowhere trying to talk to the howlers.

"Okay," Daniel said, "Let's go back to basics."

He wasn't sure they had many gestures in common, and it was easy to make a mistake with gesturing. In some countries, gesturing with the wrong hand was enough to get you into trouble. So he decided to go with something very basic. Pointing at an object, and verbally identifying it. He looked around for something easy. Not the cylinder, since he knew its shape, but little else. He needed something simpler, something that was familiar to both parties, and that had a limited number of ways to be misinterpreted.

It all looked very easy in the movies, and to some degree it was. Context could go a long way to providing help across a language barrier. For instance, if you were at a bus stop and started asking questions of people around that they found incomprehensible, most of them would still guess you were looking for a bus, or when the bus might arrive, even though there was a virtually unlimited number of other things you might be trying to say. But even that was fraught with some potential difficulty. Unless there were very few buses, going to very few places, you might wind up being helped to board the wrong bus, because no one would know if you were talking about a time or place or perhaps trying to get tickets. Generally a series of gestures could help. A tap of the watch would indicate you were interested in time. Waving at something looking like a schedule would indicate an interest in that. Pointing at a bus would generally cause someone to say the local word for bus, because in the human context it wouldn't immediately make sense for you to be asking about the color, the material it was made of or how long it had been in service.

But what did Daniel have in common with the howlers? So far he couldn't prove they even had language in the traditional sense. He had an ear for such things, but up to now he hadn't determined enough of a pattern to their vocalizations to be confident that they were using labels. Their chatter just sounded like random sounds. A roar sounded like a roar. So far he had no confirmation that they used sentences or labels as he understood them at all. But he did know that many apes (though primarily the great apes) had been taught labeling with some success since the 1970's.

Daniel knew that being able to learn the concept wasn't the same as already knowing it, but he also knew it was a lot easier to teach humans a new language _because_ _of_ their ability and inclination to label objects. It was not unreasonable to think that maybe his noises sounded just as random to the howlers as theirs did to him. He also didn't think it unreasonable to at least try to talk to them. Monkeys or not, he and his team were at their mercy, and they seemed able to build relatively complex structures, and behave socially, suggesting a level of intelligence that made speech a possibility.

Though it had initially been presumed to be a lack of intelligence, considerable study had been done on chimps and gorillas that confirmed their inability to mimic human speech was a lack of the physical -not mental- ability to do so. What their true limits were, no one had yet ascertained, but studies were ongoing, and they seemed to do very well at sign language.

For reasons of potential offensiveness, Daniel wasn't prepared to just start hand signaling. Even if he did, sign language was not universal, it varied considerably. He could try the ASL gesture for friendship, but the chances of it meaning the same thing to the howlers -even if they used sign language- were virtually nil. Not that he was unwilling to try it... eventually.

"Context," he muttered, "Context..."

The howlers weren't wearing clothing, and there was no indication they had bags for carrying items in. That was most of what Daniel had on him. Then he remembered how he'd done it on Abydos. It had all started with an energy bar. It hadn't entirely worked out, because what he'd taken to mean 'very good' (because that had been the concept he'd been _trying_ to convey at the time) actually meant something along the lines of 'sweet,' which had caused some consternation later on when he had repeated the word to try and indicate a chicken-like dish was good.

Still, it had been the start he'd needed.

Daniel patted his pockets, and found where he'd stuck an energy bar. He always kept one on his person, not only as a snack, but also as a potential peace offering and conversation starter during missions. The bar had more than once saved his hide and jump started conversations where the fate of the galaxy might hang in the balance, something the company that manufactured it would sadly never know.

He pulled the bar out, and made a big show of how good it smelled, then unwrapped it. Before he could taste it, to show what it was good for, the scarred howler growled and mock-lunged, startling him and causing him to drop it. The howler snatched up the bar and examined it, then bounded away with it, snarling over his shoulder, warning Daniel to stay away.

The howler sat down on the far side of the hut, and messily devoured the bar, snarling and glaring around at Daniel and the monkeys overhead as he did so. The behavior seemed pure animal, no words or gestures were evident, just pure dominance display and eager consumption of this new treat.

"So much for common ground," Daniel sighed.


	5. The Minister's Cat

Jack's shoulder stung where the thorns had pierced his hide, and the blood on the back of his neck where the howler had bitten him was drying into an uncomfortable crust, but he didn't feel either of those things at the moment.

He was worried about Daniel.

He knew that Daniel could take care of himself. Daniel had a seemingly unlimited supply of luck combined with surprising acumen and boldness that protected him from getting killed, or staying dead when he was. It didn't stop him from getting hurt in the process though, and today he'd gone in wounded. Physically he seemed fine, if a little sneezy, but there was something going on under that, something throwing him off his game. When he was hurting, Daniel acted like any wounded animal, and lashed out. Considering what the howlers had done to Jack just for being a smart-ass, he didn't even want to imagine what they might do if Daniel lost his cool. That's what had Jack worried.

Carter had insisted on looking at Jack's wounds after the howlers left with Daniel.

"The punctures aren't deep," she'd said, "Looks like your shirt took the worst of it."

"Yeah," Jack had shot back rather irritably, "Unless that monkey's rabid, I'm doing just fine."

Carter didn't seem to take it personally. She was worried about Daniel too. And Jack, like Daniel, tended to get snippy when he was hurt, and when he was worried. Carter knew that as well as anybody.

A couple of hours passed, largely in silence. Despite the number of times the team had been caught and imprisoned over the years, they'd never come up with a good solution for passing the time. They were always inevitably preoccupied with trying to figure a way to escape, and with concern for each other.

On TV, people always had some kind of angst going on to pass the time. Some unresolved romantic tension, some type of deep dark secret, an unfinished argument they at last found time to fight about now they were in prison. But the reality was that such things seldom came up, because they were so utterly trivial under the circumstances as to not bear mention. Granted, the only other option was the skull-crushing boredom that is sitting in a box with nothing to do, but it was utterly moronic to generate tension and instability in a team when they were already under the pressure of having been captured by some less than friendly folks. Only an idiot would bring up petty grievances under these conditions.

"So," Jack suggested, "How 'bout The Minister's Cat?"

Teal'c and Carter simply stared at him in disbelief.

"Well we can't play poker," Jack replied, "Unless one of you brought an extra deck of cards."

Carter, evidently deciding to humor her commander, said, "I think I left mine in my other pants."

Teal'c inclined his head slightly, seeing no escape from this nonsense.

Stoically, he said, "I am not in possession of any cards."

"Well there ya go then," Jack said.

* * *

Eventually, as the sky was beginning to darken, the howlers in the trees got all noisy again, then the door to the enclosure swung open. Daniel entered carrying a canteen, then turned to look back the way he'd come. A howler pulled the door closed, and only then did Daniel turn to look at the rest of them.

"So?" Jack said, "How'd it go?"

"Badly," Daniel replied, and it was clear his nose was thoroughly stuffed up at this point.

He quickly crossed to where the others were sitting, and handed Jack the canteen. Jack wasn't sure which one of them it had belonged to originally, but he was glad to find it had water in it. He passed the canteen around as Daniel sat down with them.

"I tried everything I could think of, up to and including charades," Daniel sighed wearily, "They clearly communicate at a fairly high level, but I can't figure out how to talk to them."

"Any idea what they want?" Carter inquired, before taking her turn to drink from the canteen.

"Something to do with the device we found. That's all I know," Daniel shrugged in defeat.

"I'm guessing they didn't say anything about letting us go," Jack ventured.

"I wouldn't know if they had," Daniel answered.

"Okay, well, while you were wasting time with the Bandar-Logs, we've been describing the Minister's Cat," Jack said helpfully, "So now I think it's your turn."

Daniel took the canteen back when it was passed to him and asked which letter they were on, remarking that he'd always preferred Consequences.

"X," Jack said, then admitted, "We've actually been there for awhile."

Daniel took a thoughtful swig from the canteen, then said, "Xanthous."

"Gesundheit," Jack replied.

"It means yellow," Daniel told him.

"I knew that," Jack -who had up to now been winning- said somewhat defensively, "We're playing progressively. But since you weren't here for the previous letters, I'll give you a mulligan on that one."

To his credit, Daniel didn't say anything to this, he simply raised an eyebrow.

Carter, going next said, "Well I guess the Minister's Cat is a Yellow cat," she then repeated it including all of the adjectives that had come before.

"The Minister's Cat is a really ugly cat," Jack remarked dryly.

"No, the next letter is Z, sir" Carter corrected.

"That's not what I meant and you know it," Jack protested.

"Sorry sir," Carter gave him a sheepish look, "You know the rules."

"Now that's just dirty pool," Jack muttered.

"We're still describing the cat," Daniel told him, "We can talk about the pool during the next round."

And so the evening passed away into night. The time of their scheduled check in with the SGC passed without their remarking on it. It wasn't the first time that had happened, and they all knew what that meant without having to discuss it. With obnoxious efficiency, Daniel took over the game of Minister's Cat. Jack forbade him from using words that didn't appear in an _English_ dictionary, saying using adjectives from other languages -particularly dead or alien ones- was cheating. This quickly devolved into an argument because Daniel insisted that the languages English had developed from _had_ to count (there was a brief skirmish over whether a word stopped being a word if people stopped using it), and by proxy any languages that branched from those roots also had to be allowed, a point Jack vehemently disagreed with, and each man valiantly defended his position until the sky turned indigo and the stars appeared, shining bright through the branches of the trees overhead.

In truth, Jack was relieved that Daniel was so ready to argue with him. Often he was tweaking Daniel because it was fun, and also a kind of soft revenge for how often Daniel was really annoying (particularly when he was right). But it also gave him a base line for how Daniel reacted to certain things, which offered him a means of quickly and accurately judging Daniel's mental and emotional condition in a very similar way to how pinching skin could help diagnose dehydration.

Quickness to defense wasn't enough. The method and humor (or lack thereof) also factored in. Jack wasn't really interested in the language argument itself, Daniel was probably technically right about it anyway. Jack just wanted to know how swiftly, with what tone and which logic Daniel would use to guard his position on the issue. After that he pretty much just kept going because it was fun, and a welcome distraction from their predicament.

Maybe it was Jack's imagination, but it seemed to him that Daniel was doing an assessment of his own. In the early days of their friendship, arguments had been all about being right. Gradually, there had come a subtle but critical transition where being right came secondarily to being understood. Eventually, it grew into arguing in an attempt to be clear about matters, to make sure the other person's opinion was a solid one even if you didn't agree with it. Now it was a parlor game of its own, wherein they tried to trip each other up, and eventually come to a consensus, sometimes over a period of weeks or months or even years of coming back to that single point.

Jack had never had so much fun arguing with someone in his life, and it was clear to him that Daniel felt that way too. Their friendship was based on trust and respect forged in fire, upon which had been built understanding that did not require agreement, and affection that was not dependent upon the avoidance of certain sensitive topics. Between them, no subject was sacrosanct, not religion, not politics, not family. They didn't have to draw lines in the sand because they each had enough trust in the other to know that those lines would not be crossed.

Tonight, it was clear that Daniel was frustrated, and his arguments were punctuated by clearing his throat and sometimes pausing to cough, but otherwise he was in fine form, and even seemed to be quite enjoying himself, arguing vehemently about something that patently did not matter one bit in the grand scheme of things. Jack was just glad to see Danny being his usual passionate and lively self.

Carter and Teal'c didn't get it. To them it looked like Jack and Daniel were just fighting, and over something extremely trivial to boot. To Teal'c, words were largely unnecessary. To Carter, you asked someone if they were alright by asking if they were alright, not by picking a fight with them. With anyone but Daniel, Jack might've agreed, though a sarcastic comment was always more his style. And of course nobody was more caring and protective of his friends than Daniel. But with each other, bugging the heck out of one another was how they showed they cared, it was simply their way. Carter and Teal'c didn't get it, but they accepted it as a fact of working with Jack and Daniel.

Once it was well and truly night, Carter intervened, declared it a draw and suggested they get some sleep. Neither Jack nor Daniel could argue with that, and so they decided to accept Carter's ruling. A mere look from one man to the other confirmed that they were both amused by how uncomfortable Carter was with their arguing, finding the idea that she thought they were at all serious hilarious.

Jack didn't bother setting a watch. Not only were they in prison, but Teal'c was functionally always on watch, and Jack had quickly figured out that not taking advantage of that was pure foolishness. Military doctrine insisted on certain practices, such as rotating watches and who was on point position, but it didn't take alien worlds into account and it certainly didn't take the abilities of a Jaffa into consideration. Retired from the Air Force multiple times, Jack had learned to be flexible.

A team in the field learned a lot of things about each other. They didn't necessarily learn about family histories or anything like that (though they often did), but they learned the stuff that really mattered. They knew how much pressure any one of them could take without breaking. They knew which of them did well in the sand, and which did better in the snow. They could recognize when one of their number was starting to flounder, long before anyone on the outside would even know something was wrong. They knew how far and how fast each of them could go without a rest. Each knew exactly how good of a shot the others were, and how well they could handle themselves in close combat as well as ranged, which meant they also knew exactly when to help and when to let one of their number handle something themselves.

But they were also familiar with even more intimate details. They each had habits and rituals before sleep, and there were circumstances under which each of them would find it difficult or impossible to sleep. None of them snored regularly, not even Daniel with his clogged sinuses, which was a very good thing in the field. But they all occasionally suffered from nightmares. Even though Teal'c didn't technically sleep or dream, he did sometimes find it difficult to Kelno'reem, usually because something was bothering him, in the same way that real fears turned into nightmares during sleep for the rest of them. Because it was an affliction that came naturally with the territory, they all understood both its cause and its natural consequences in more than a merely intellectual way.

Tonight, the nightmares were with Daniel.

When Daniel's sleep was plagued by nightmares, he was usually very quiet. Only rarely did he disturb anyone if he was awakened in the middle of the night by a bad dream. Teal'c was likely always aware of such occurrences with any member of the team, but seldom reacted, behaving as if he had not noticed. For those that knew him, it was clear that he did this out of respect and kindness. It was his way to handle personal trials alone, and so it was also his way to let others do the same. Any other response seemed to puzzle and even distress him to some degree. Personal affairs were personal by definition, and he disliked outside interference with his own inner demons, and therefore typically (and quite masterfully) feigned ignorance about anyone else's.

In this case, Daniel didn't wake Carter. Likely he wouldn't have disturbed Jack either had the Colonel not been in a very light stage of sleep. Even so, by the time Jack had woken up, Daniel was quietly sitting up. He had his legs drawn up, his arms wrapped around them and his forehead was resting on his knees. The only evidence of distress was that his hands were balled into fists and he was clearly putting pressure on his legs with his arms to prevent himself from shaking.

When they talked about nightmares, most people talked about a big bad monster of some kind, and certainly SG-1 had their pick of the litter as far as horrible alien things went. A lesser sort of nightmare involved intense personal embarrassment, usually involving being nude while speaking publicly. But people like Jack and Daniel knew another kind of nightmare. For those who had dealt with tragedy, and loss beyond what anyone should have to endure, there was another kind of horror that came to one in dreams. The kind where the dead returned, only to remind you in a painful way that they were gone forever. That sort of nightmare cut like a knife, even once you were awake, because that nightmare was true, and had the power not only to frighten a dreaming mind, but to reopen a very real wound to the soul.

After the death of his son, Charlie, Jack had mostly stopped sleeping because whenever he closed his eyes, he saw his son. Whenever he slept, he dreamed that he had been there the moment of his son's death, that he had stood by and watched, for some reason unable to move, unable to stop it from happening. He had dreamed his dead son came and asked him why. Why had he died? Why did it have to happen? Parents were never meant to outlive their children. Jack had told himself that over and over, and descended into a kind of grief that seemed only to have one way out. The Stargate had been his way out. But, because of Daniel, it had not been the way he'd expected.

It was a different wound that Daniel had suffered, and he was dealing with it better than Jack ever had, but that didn't make the agony of it any less. Orphaned at a young age, brilliant but unaccepted by the archeological community he had spent his life trying to better, Daniel had been forced to go to another planet to find someone who believed in him, who loved him for who he was, imperfections and all. That person had been Sha're, and Jack only wished he'd been a good enough man to have loved his own wife as deeply and selflessly as Daniel had loved Sha're. Maybe if he had a better man, he would still be married. Perhaps he would have dealt better with the loss of his son.

But what would have become of Daniel? If Jack had been a different person than he was, he would never have been tapped for the original mission through the Stargate. How would the Abydos mission have ended if there had been someone besides Jack there? Someone less able to do what had to be done? Someone less able to admit to himself what he'd become? Someone who refused to hear Daniel in those critical moments where it had made all the difference? And what about since then? Who else could have called Daniel home from Abydos? Under who else's command would Daniel have consented to serve? And what of Teal'c? Who besides Jack would Teal'c have believed in? Who besides Jack would have fought to bring the Jaffa warrior onto the team? Jack was under no illusions of being perfect or indispensable, but he knew that all the what ifs in the world could not return his son to life, or repair his broken marriage. Daniel had taught him that. It had taken a man obsessed with discovering the true nature of the past to teach Jack that the past is dead, and you can't live there.

Without a word, Jack went and sat beside Daniel.

"I was there," Daniel whispered after they'd been sitting in silence for several minutes.

"I know, Danny," Jack replied gently.

"I was right there," Daniel repeated, his voice barely audible, "I stood by and watched."

"There was nothing you could've done."

"After my parents were killed, I promised myself I would never stand by and watch someone die again. Somehow, someway, I'd find a way to stop it. Whoever it was, whatever it took..."

While Daniel trailed off, Jack flashed back to that moment in Ra's throne room. Daniel had tried to stop Jack, but he'd acted anyway, the end result of which had been Daniel throwing himself into the line of fire to save Jack's life. Jack, who at the time had hated Daniel's guts, had done nothing but insult and berate and drive him, and who sought his own death almost above all else. That's who Daniel had acted to save then, and it would have cost him his life if not for the pride of Ra, which had demanded Daniel be resurrected and used to kill Jack and the others. But for that, Daniel would have been gone forever, and they both knew it. Yet Jack had seen Daniel willing to do the same thing again, with just as much certainty that he would die as he'd had then.

"... but when it was Sha're... I couldn't... I couldn't do a damn thing to save her. I loved her, Jack... but I couldn't do _anything_ ," Daniel said, his voice almost a whimper.

"I know, Danny," Jack told him, "I know."

There wasn't anything else he could say. He could tell Daniel it wasn't his fault, but Daniel already knew that. Besides that, Jack had heard those comfortless words a thousand times after Charlie died. That he couldn't have known, that it wasn't his fault, that there was nothing he could have done. But he still felt guilty. Even though Daniel had been there when his parents died, he'd been an eight year old boy, and there was nothing he could have done to save them. When Sha're had died, Daniel was likewise helpless, incapable of doing anything save watch it happen.

But knowing that didn't lessen the pain. It didn't stop the what ifs that came to drown him in the middle of the night. It didn't stop the dreams. Jack knew, because the same thing happened to him sometimes. Not a day went by that he didn't think of Charlie at least once, but he didn't always have the guilt hanging around his neck like a weight. He wasn't stuck in it like quicksand anymore. Most of the time he was okay, even doing well. But every now and then, some inner demon would come tapping at the back of his consciousness, reminding him of his loss, inviting him to wallow again in self-pity and guilt and pain, and it would take everything he had to keep it shut out.

Jack realized he didn't need to think of anything to say. He simply put an arm around the younger man's shoulders. For a tense moment, Daniel didn't respond. Then he let go, and leaned against his friend. Jack didn't know why Daniel was shivering, whether from fear or sorrow or guilt or what, but he knew it didn't matter. What mattered was that Daniel needed him, and he was there.

In a way, that was all that had ever mattered.

* * *

In the morning, Daniel showed no trace of how fragile and vulnerable he'd been the night before. Neither Jack nor Daniel mentioned their conversation, because it was nobody else's business what they'd said, and they themselves already knew.

The howlers were up with the dawn, shaking the trees and roaring at the top of their lungs. For Jack, it was a rude and unwonted awakening that came far earlier than he would have preferred.

"What an annoying sound they've discovered!" Jack shouted to be heard above the racket.

"They're staking a claim to their territory," Daniel shouted back, "Reminding any other howlers in hearing distance that they own this patch of real estate."

"They're making my ears ring is what they're doing!" Jack yelled, "It's really obnoxious!"

"So tell them to stop," Daniel suggested sarcastically.

"I'd rather throw rocks at them until they shut up," Jack grumbled

Before Daniel could voice a response, the note the howlers were roaring changed. Jack recognized it as the same noise they'd made yesterday both times the scarred Alpha male howler had come.

"Sounds like his Royal Majesty, Scarface, is on his way," Jack remarked.

"Try not to piss him off this time," Daniel pleaded.

"Wasn't tryin' to piss him off the first time," Jack said.

Daniel said nothing to this, merely gave Jack one of _those_ looks.

The enclosure gate opened, and the big scarred howler swaggered in. Watching the way he paraded around, showing off his size and strength while the howlers that had scurried in after him chattered respectfully and fled from his path when he turned in their direction, Jack wondered what there was to translate, as the communication seemed pretty obvious and straight forward to him.

Of course, Jack had spent a lot of his life around bullies and blowhards, where whoever beat his chest the loudest was king, and the words he spoke were themselves incidental, the important thing was who he said them to and how. If any of the crew he ran with either before or after joining the Air Force encountered someone they didn't know, the first thing they did was try to harass and belittle them to see what would happen. That reflex hadn't wholly kicked in when Jack had first met Carter, but she'd clearly seen it before, and knew the way to defend herself was give as good or better than she got, and then act ready to take the matter straight to the mat.

But such was not Daniel's way. You had to _really_ push his buttons to see what he was made of. He defended his opinions like a lioness with her cubs, but himself he was much less protective of. What was the first thing he'd done with these howlers? Made himself small, insignificant, and subordinate. Suddenly it made sense why Daniel couldn't get through to them.

"Daniel," Jack said quietly while the big howler was still posturing, "That monkey's been yanking your chain. The reason you can't communicate with him is that he's not working with you."

"What?" Daniel asked, managing to keep his voice soft, "What do you mean?"

"I mean he's using you to show off how clever he is."


	6. Teamwork

Once Jack pointed out, Daniel realized it was pretty obvious. Daniel was used to two basic types of leader: the ones who were willing to listen and learn, and the ones who proved their dominance by abusing the powerless. The latter usually did a lot of shouting, physical menacing and more or less constantly resorted to violence to prove their superiority. The other howlers had acted like their scarred leader was one of the latter, but Daniel had missed it because the big, black monkey king had done very little to menace Daniel the day before.

No, what he'd done was far more subtle. He'd purposely misunderstood Daniel's every attempt at communication, and dropped red herring clues and suggestions that had resulted only in Daniel's looking incredibly foolish to the other howlers. It had been a demonstration of power, but not in any of the ways Daniel had come to expect. The ape had been proving his mental might by playing dumb. That was a behavior Daniel had seen remarkably few times, and it was an oft overlooked tactic.

But of course Jack had recognized it, because he specialized in pretending to be stupid and dense. He used it to get his way, to make other people lose their cool and look foolish when they lost their temper at him, to provoke other people into going on the attack so he had an excuse to defend himself without getting into trouble, and also -quite often- to make people he liked look a lot smarter and more reasonable by comparison. He used it to get what he wanted, and to get out of doing what he didn't want. Jack was very good at what he did, using it for the benefit of those of which he approved, and the detriment to those which he did not. It was no surprise that he should recognize his own calling card, even if it was being used by a monkey.

Daniel could be accused of being impulsive. Certainly that was part of what had driven him through the Stargate originally. But today his first impulse was to not piss off the monkeys, to use the opportunity to study how long it would take them to tire of their game, and what tactics they would use to try and make sure he stayed on the string, because it might provide insight into how primitive humans had interacted and behaved. But right now the clock was ticking.

SG-1 had missed one check-in already, and it wouldn't be long before their GDOs were locked out, if they hadn't been already. There was always a backup solution, usually involving gating to a world where allies of the Tau'ri who had a special GDO and iris code of their own lived. But that was a less than ideal solution for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that allies could sometimes change residency, or be attacked, or cease being allies. Another option was to go somewhere a team was scheduled to visit, but that came with risks of not knowing what lay on the other side of the 'Gate. And the longer they waited, the less they would know of scheduled missions.

Now was not the time to screw around with the howlers. Not with that hanging over his head. Not with the rest of SG-1 counting on him to make _some kind_ of progress communicating with their captors. Not when he could clearly remember all the times before that he'd let SG-1 down because his personal feelings and interests got in the way, jeopardizing their safety or even getting them hurt. He knew he'd wind up doing it again, because there would always be something he was so interested in, so passionate about that he would forget himself and everyone around him. But not today.

Back in the hut, when Scar thrust the cylinder at him, Daniel took it, then brazenly set it aside. He had avoided direct eye contact yesterday to avoid appearing challenging. He did not show the howlers this courtesy today, staring right at their leader defiantly. He knew doing so was a risk, but they needed to understand that he knew they'd been using him, and that he wasn't having a bit of it.

It needed to be completely unambiguous that Daniel was only willing to try and communicate if the howlers were. So long as they wanted to use him to amuse themselves, he wasn't willing to play. Like anyone used to getting their way by using intimidation and force, Scar was infuriated.

Scar snarled at him, using tactics that had yesterday gotten Daniel to back off, give ground and send submissive signals to avoid a fight. But today Daniel held his ground, and refused to give up his position. _Now_ they were communicating, albeit not in the way Daniel had wanted. Now he could read what the howler was saying, and knew the howler understood what he said back.

With a roar, Scar lunged at him. Daniel didn't flinch. But he raised his head slightly. The staring was challenging, but the slightly bared throat said he didn't want to fight. It was a message a human might fail to see entirely, and one an animal couldn't miss, but might find confusing when the two signals were coupled to make a singular message. Daniel was betting the howlers would get it.

Scar roared right in his face, showing his mandrill-like fangs to their roots, spittle flying from between his open jaws. Despite the size difference, Daniel got the uncomfortable impression that the howler could fit his entire head in its mouth, and he didn't even want to begin to imagine what those wicked canines could do to his skull, given the opportunity and enough bite force.

"I'm not some toy for you to amuse yourself with," Daniel said in mild tones, knowing his message would be carried by eye contact and intonation, rather than the words themselves, but that speaking them would help him to focus on what he wanted to convey, "If you want to talk, then let's talk. But if you want to use me to show off how smart you are to your friends, I won't be the tool you use for that. You want something from us. So tell me what you want. Otherwise, get the hell out of my face."

The howler slapped his ear hard. It felt like being hit with a two-by-four, and Daniel would have been knocked down from his sitting position if he hadn't put a hand out to stop himself. Knowing this was as much a demonstration to the howler's followers as to Daniel himself, he forced his eyes open and glared at Scar even though his ear throbbed and his brain felt like it was swishing around in his skull, making it difficult to see.

Despite the desire to roll over again, Daniel knew that would only stop the attack for now. He'd be right back to where he'd started. Every time the howler won by beating him up, the howler became that much stronger in the eyes of his followers, making him more inclined to do it again. Though he might not ever do it unprovoked, Daniel didn't want to bet on the morality of a monkey.

Since they couldn't do things the easy way, they had to do them the hard way. Daniel was more than willing to let Scar play the dominant role, but not at the cost of Daniel's ability to reach an understanding with him. What he didn't know what how much of this monkey was posturing, and how much was deadly serious. Certainly it hadn't taken much of anything from Jack to set the howler off, and it didn't seem to have taken a lot from Daniel either.

"Go ahead, hit me again if it'll make you feel better," Daniel hissed, intentionally dropping his voice to a slightly lower pitch, "But it won't change anything."

Based on the howler's reaction, Daniel bet he took that lower tone as a threat. Scar went on the attack, and the audience went wild with hooting and hollering, jumping up and down on their perches and banging on the perches and walls with their hands to make a lot of noise.

Scar slapped him several more times, and when Daniel put his arms up to protect himself, the howler lunged forward and latched onto his right forearm with its teeth. The howler's mouth was large enough that when the jaws closed, the canine teeth crossed on the opposite side of Daniel's arm from the monkey. The howler's mouth snapped shut with enough force to break Daniel's arm, but once the molars met skin, the howler eased up a little.

Daniel couldn't hope to twist his arm free, and attempting to do so would only wind up doing more damage, as the howler would tighten his grip to hang on. Daniel resisted the impulse to try and kick the howler away, knowing it hadn't done Jack any good and would ruin Daniel's chance of making the point he was trying to get across.

What was a little blood and an open wound in exchange for understanding?

"Does it make you feel big?" Daniel growled through clenched teeth, still glaring into the reddening eyes of the howler, "Attacking an unarmed prisoner in front of your pack? We both know even if I managed to fight back, they'd just tear me apart. So what does this prove?"

Infuriated by the insubordination and blatant disrespect, the howler bit down harder. Daniel screamed.

* * *

Bloodied, holding his injured arm with the hand of his good arm, Daniel was returned to the enclosure. Even though he tried not to draw attention to it, turning to watch the gate close as he had the night before, then moving to rejoin the team, Sam noticed at once that Daniel was hurt.

"Daniel!" Sam cried, springing up to come to his aid, concern and anger both visible in her features.

"I'm okay," Daniel said, trying to wave off her examination.

"The hell you are," Sam retorted, refusing to be dissuaded, trying to check the wound to his arm through the shredded fabric of his jacket, and the bruising on the side of his head at the same time.

"So," Jack asked, not getting up, as Daniel walked over and sat next to him, Sam still hovering around him like a worried mother hen, "How'd it go?"

"You were right," Daniel sighed, "I was being played for a fool."

"I usually am," Jack gloated.

Daniel decided to let that one slide. He'd already fought enough battles for one day.

"You didn't get these injuries from playing the fool," Sam observed, carefully starting to pull Daniel's jacket off enough to get a real look at his arm.

"Well that's because I told King Kong what I thought of him," Daniel replied.

"And?" Jack asked, with raised eyebrows.

"And it pissed him off," Daniel concluded.

"I see," Jack nodded knowledgeably.

"But I think he got my point," Daniel said brightly, then winced when Sam's gently probing fingers found the ragged edge of one of the punctures left by the howler's teeth, "Ow."

"Sorry," Sam muttered, though Daniel half suspected she'd done it on purpose as a wordless comment about Daniel's approach of intentionally provoking the howlers.

"And what, pray tell, makes you think that?" Jack inquired.

"Well, for one thing, I'm still alive. For another, after doing this-" he nodded towards his injured arm, "he started yelling at his subordinates and then took off. They brought me back here."

"You pissed him off so much he had to leave the room?" Jack sounded very surprised by this news.

"Apparently," Daniel shrugged somewhat sheepishly, then flinched as the action tugged at the jacket, which in turn brushed against the bite wound on his arm.

"Danny," Jack began, then seemed not to be able to think of anything else to say, and just shook his head and sighed in exasperation.

"Yes, I know. He could have killed me," Daniel replied to the unspoken scolding, "But I thought he was smarter than that. And I was _right_."

"You usually are," Jack muttered discontentedly.

"And just what do you think this accomplished?" Sam asked, gesturing to Daniel's arm with the cloth she'd pulled from one of her pockets.

She doused the cloth in water, which was all that she had, and started trying to clean around the bite.

"What this accomplished-" Daniel began, then stopped with a hiss when Sam put too much pressure on his arm; this time he believed it was accidental.

"Now Mighty Joe Young knows Daniel can figure it out when he's being played," Jack supplied, since Daniel had been briefly rendered incoherent, "And that he's tougher than he looks."

Suspecting thinly veiled ridicule, Daniel gazed at Jack searchingly. Jack looked back steadily for a moment, and then (intentionally, Daniel thought) misinterpreted why Daniel was staring at him.

"What?" Jack asked, "There was nothing else good in theaters that week."

"Since when do you have time to go to movie theaters?" Sam asked, pausing in her ministrations to look over her shoulder at Jack.

But Daniel understood with a clarity that was startling even to him, "That was not long after Jack got the Ancient database downloaded into his brain."

During the time off that followed, Jack must have been doing things that made him feel normal and human again. It was the sort of experience that required that kind of detox. Still, Daniel wasn't sure that a movie about a gorilla that was too big to be accepted by other gorillas really qualified.

"Yes..." Jack dropped his gaze for a moment, then changed the subject, "So how's the arm? Will you be able to be our pitcher come baseball season?"

"We don't play baseball," Daniel pointed out.

"That's beside the point," Jack said firmly, clearly seeking to avoid letting the conversation slip back into the topic he was trying to escape from.

Sam aided and abetted by saying, "He'll live, but he's lucky it's not broken."

"He wasn't trying to break me," Daniel pointed out, "He was just trying to scare me."

"And did he succeed?" Jack asked.

Looking at his shredded arm and frowning, Daniel answered, "Yeah, he did a bit."

"But you didn't back off," Sam remarked.

"Danny never has," Jack said before Daniel could reply, "Why would he start now?"

"Can you... stop talking like I'm not sitting right here?" Daniel asked, vaguely annoyed.

"Only if you stop being a pain in the ass," Jack replied.

Resisting the urge to smile, Daniel answered back, "Never."

Sam tried to give them both an irritated look, but amusement sparkled in her blue eyes. She was annoyed with Daniel for getting himself hurt, and with Jack for seemingly approving of it, but she knew as well as Jack did that Daniel had acted out of faith in Jack's observations and opinion of what was happening, and Jack's response was appreciation and recognition of that trust. Everything else could be written off as affection, team bonding and reveling in the fact that they were all still alive.

"The howlers are returning," Teal'c interrupted before they could continue.

Daniel looked up at this and listened. Teal'c was right; the howlers were getting stirred up again, and making the sound they made when their scarred leader arrived.

As one, the team arose and turned towards the gate to the enclosure, standing together as a unit. They didn't have to discuss the point they intended to make now. They were SG-1, and they would not stand by as one of their own was taken away and beaten. It didn't matter which of them it was, or what they'd said or done to cause the beating, the team wouldn't stand by and do nothing. Even if they couldn't stop it, they would still put up a fight. That was their way.

The howlers fell silent as the gate swung open. Scar walked in, his usual contingent following and spreading around the enclosure behind him. Daniel noticed that he was walking on three legs, the fourth was up against his body, holding onto something. He stopped some distance from the team, and seemed to be sizing them up. They were of course much taller than the howlers, and standing together made a much larger 'body' than the howlers were perhaps used to seeing them as. Even when they spread out, the howlers were in such numbers that they seemed to flow like a river, a single moving body instead of multiple smaller ones. So far, SG-1 had been more separated and it was possible the howlers had formerly seen them only as individuals.

Daniel wasn't surprised when Jack stepped forward, holding one of his hands slightly away from his body and gesturing slightly but sharply, palm towards the team, ordering them to stay.

Jack didn't have to repeat the gesture or do anything more overt to enforce it. One of the first things Jack had trained Daniel on was recognizing hand signals, which entailed more than just knowing what they looked like. It also required him to know when and where to look for them, because sometimes -as now- they weren't meant to be noticed by others. Lacking his glasses, Daniel couldn't have made out a more complicated gesture than the command to stay, but Jack knew that.

Scar stared at the impudent human that moved towards him. In social structures with hierarchy emphasized as it was in the howlers, members of higher standing moved towards, lower moved away. Jack was taking a dominant position, moving directly towards the howler, eyes locked. As if he was looking for another fight. Slowly opening its mouth and revealing its fangs, Scar looked prepared to take him up on that.

Linguistics were beyond Jack's ken for the most part. But when it came this kind of communication, Jack was nothing shy of expert, and he stopped just one step before the howler would have launched at him. Jack always knew just how far he could push before a fight, and how hard he could push before a fight turned lethal. He'd measured the howler's tolerance during their first meeting in the enclosure, when he'd overstepped his bounds. Now he knew just how hard he could push those buttons.

The howler lifted his head slightly. Jack tilted his own down, away from the howler. But he didn't break eye contact. Instead, he gestured towards Daniel, and spoke in a low voice.

" _Never_ ," he practically snarled at the howler, "That's one of my people. You don't do that to my people."

The howler opened his mouth and snarled back, roaring a low-note response to the threat in Jack's tone. Daniel wasn't sure Jack's message was getting across, or if the howler merely thought Jack was challenging him. Jack might just be making the howler mad. In fact, the look in the howler's eyes suggested that was exactly what was happening. Jack could convey dominance and threat, but he couldn't explain his reason. That was about to get him in trouble.

Despite the command, Daniel knew he had to intervene.

"Jack..." he spoke softly, but warningly.

"Daniel..." Jack replied in like tone, not taking his eyes off Scar, "The adults are talking."

"The _adults_ ," Daniel said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice and failing, "Need to calm down."

Jack must have let his irritation with Daniel show. What Daniel saw was the shift in Scar's demeanor, from unsure to certain. The howler had been warning Jack to back off, but suddenly he was done with warnings. This time however there was nothing to stop Daniel from getting in the way. Reacting faster than Jack because the colonel's attention had been divided between himself and the howler, Daniel moved to block the scarred howler's path.

The howler leaped high, but was brought up short when he struck a body closer than expected. Daniel fell back with the impact, colliding with Jack, and all three of them toppled to the ground. Daniel landed partially on top of Jack, and the howler was on his chest, fangs right in his face. Daniel didn't try any primitive diplomacy. If the howler wanted to bite someone, it damn well wasn't going to be Jack. Daniel locked eyes with the howler, making no attempt to hide any of his frustration or anger with the situation, knowing that look in his eyes would likely infuriate Scar. All that hostility directed at him would provoke the hell out of him.

For a moment, it looked like the howler meant to rip Daniel's throat out, then go right through him to get at Jack. But then suddenly he sat back. Confusion clouded the howler's features, and he let his lips fall partially over his fangs. He looked from Jack to Daniel and back, puzzlement overtaking anger.

Daniel realized Jack was still under him, and he could feel the colonel had also locked eyes with the howler, likely having the same look of rage and fear that Daniel did. Anger at their circumstances, fear for the life of his friend, fury at this little monkey that was jerking their collective chain in addition to holding them captive. Daniel knew Jack would've done anything to have been between him and the howler in that moment, and he appreciated that. They could fight and disagree all they liked, but when everything was on the line, they were willing to die for each other, and to get the job done. Sam and Teal'c would have done the same for them, given the opportunity, but with Jack and Daniel, there was a deeper connection, one neither of them really understood but both accepted.

The scarred howler seemed unsure how to extricate himself. For whatever reason, he didn't seem to want to carry out his attack, but he also didn't want to lose face with his pack. He was stuck.

"Jack," Daniel said quietly, "You need to relax."

"Hell with that," Jack spat through his teeth.

"He doesn't want to bite," Daniel retorted harshly, but still quietly, "But if we don't give him something, he's going to have to."

"He's sitting on us," Jack growled, "What more does he need?"

"Surrender," Daniel answered.

"What?!"

Rather than try to explain, Daniel decided to lead by example. Taking a shuddering breath, hoping to God he wasn't wrong, he closed his eyes and tilted his head back, baring his throat to Scar. He couldn't see whether Jack followed suit, but he could feel Jack letting the tension out of his body. Tension attracted aggression. Relaxing his muscles might be enough to sooth the howler's need to show that he'd won and Jack had lost. But doing it went against every instinct Jack had.

Daniel felt the howler lean forward on his chest, and he couldn't quite manage not to tremble a little. Through the blood roaring in his ears, he heard Sam shout a protest, but he suspected the other howlers had moved in before she and Teal'c could join the fray. Either that or they realized that there was nothing they could do as things stood now that could prevent the howler from taking Daniel out, if he so desired, and that any move on their part might provoke just that outcome.

Then, quite suddenly, the weight came off. The howler jumped over Daniel and went flying around the enclosure, hooting and snarling, grabbing onto the thorny walls and shaking them, chasing his subordinates around, in general venting all his aggression on whatever randomly got in his way. But he hadn't killed Daniel, and he hadn't killed Jack either.

With an audible gasp of relief, Daniel opened his eyes and practically went limp as the tension he'd been unable to let go of suddenly released. Still halfway under him, Jack patted Daniel's shoulder.

"Good boy, Danny," Jack whispered, just as breathless as Daniel, "That's teamwork."

Without discussion, they opted to stay where they were until Scar had finished his tantrum. Once things got quiet, and Daniel had recovered enough of his composure, he rolled off Jack and they both sat up, inspecting themselves for any harm that might have been done in the fall.

"You're both completely insane," Sam remarked dryly, "You do realize that, don't you?"

Daniel and Jack looked at her, taking in the combination of anger at their recklessness and relief at their being in one piece and even a bit of awe that they'd managed to pull that off written on her face, then they looked at each other. Daniel shrugged.

Looking back at Sam, Jack responded, "It took you three years to figure that out?"

Sam shook her head, but her relief outweighed all the other emotions of the moment, and she laughed when she said, "Unbelievable."


	7. A Matter of Faith

It wasn't that Jack didn't appreciate what Daniel had done, or that he denied that doing it had been right, it was just that he wished Daniel would be a little more careful with his own life. He knew Daniel's intense loyalty, and it was one of the things he liked best about the man; but it sometimes it seemed like Daniel was always a little too ready to throw himself under the bus to protect who and what he cared about. Yet Jack knew that Daniel valued all life, including his own, and he didn't offer up that most precious of all things lightly. It was one of the seeming paradoxes about Daniel's character that Jack found eternally puzzling. Daniel didn't want to die, yet he was always more than ready to risk his life for what he believed in, and the people he cared about.

One of these days, they both knew, it would not turn out well for him. One day he was going to offer his life in exchange for something, and whatever forces ran the universe were going to take him up on it. And then Jack would be left without a huge part of what helped make him a better human being. He'd never want to admit it, but Jack knew he needed Daniel's presence and perspective for balance.

But today it had worked out in Daniel's favor. After the intense opening argument with Scar, things calmed down. The howler had been carrying an object when he came in, and he'd dropped that when he lunged for Jack and Daniel. After things had settled down, Jack realized it was the cylinder that Carter had been so interested in.

Scar, once finished demonstrating how powerful he was by kicking over inanimate objects, went to the cylinder, picked it up, and presented it to Daniel. After a moment's hesitation, Daniel took it, and looked at it.

"I don't know what you want me to do with this," Daniel said.

Scar then drew the first five symbols on the cylinder in the dirt. Below that, he drew what looked like five random letters from the alphabet.

"You want me to translate this?" Daniel asked, and the howler gestured at what he'd drawn, "So you _do_ have a grasp of writing and some kind of alphabet, don't you?"

The howler made some kind of grunting noise, and sat down in the dirt. Daniel sat down in front of him, and Jack knew that he was going to have to watch Daniel do his thing. Jack couldn't have been less interested in watching Daniel make an idiot of himself trying to communicate if he'd tried, but the alternative was sitting around in this enclosure doing nothing.

Besides, if Daniel went and pissed off the head monkey again, Jack wanted to be there to intervene, not that it had gone well last time he'd done that. Daniel was fundamentally opposed to letting other people fight his battles for him, or even protect him really. Jack would say Daniel was remarkably brave for a geek, but the truth was the man was just flat courageous for any human of any group, and possibly he was also a bit nuts, but a good kind of nuts. Still, as team leader, it was Jack's job to try and protect his people, even when they would rather sacrifice themselves for his benefit.

It seemed like something had been gotten across to the howlers though. Jack wasn't sure if Scar understood that these three people were Jack's team and he was their leader, or if he'd merely gotten a 'you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us' kind of vibe off Daniel. Hell, maybe he was just impressed by how ready Daniel was to protect Jack, and maybe the howler respected that or something. In any case, Scar toned down the aggression, and seemed to be actually working with Daniel now from what Jack could tell. That was something.

Unfortunately, it gradually became evident that it wasn't enough. Eventually, Daniel asked Carter to come and join them. Scar seemed momentarily put off, and growled irritably, but Daniel talked and gestured extensively, trying to explain that there were terms here he wasn't sure of, that Carter was the science expert. Daniel didn't call on Teal'c, because even though there were Goa'uld symbols, they didn't seem to form any complete words, only parts of them.

The howlers ranged around the enclosure were fairly quiet, the ones in the trees overhead chattered occasionally at one another, but the majority of the noise from the monkeys came from outside, where there seemed to be a variety of arguments going on from how angry they sounded when they vocalized. Scar sat almost motionless, his sharp eyes catching every move Daniel and Carter made, but offering no interruption or interference.

"Is anybody else hungry?" Jack ventured after several hours of geeky silence from Daniel and Carter, during which they seemed to communicate primarily in moments of eye contact and a series of imprecise gestures and occasional frantic scribbling in the sand.

They were each carrying at least one emergency ration somewhere on their person, in addition to what they normally carried in their packs. Knowing Daniel, he probably had several energy bars in his pockets. But both Daniel and Carter were too deep in their work to even notice Jack's question, much less respond to it. None of them had eaten since before their capture, but those two weren't likely to remember that until they were done with whatever they were doing.

There were a few of reasons that they hadn't touched the ration packs yet. One reason was that they were actually doing alright just now. It had been awhile since they'd eaten, but they weren't in any danger yet, and it just made sense to save the ration packs for emergencies. Another reason was that the howlers were apt to take the ration packs if they saw them, if for no other reason than curiosity. After all, they'd already swiped Jack's first aid kit and Daniel's glasses, among other things. A third reason had to do with the fact that the team hadn't been given much water. It took water to process food; if you had limited water, you wanted to limit your food intake as much as possible so that water could last. So far there was no indication as to how often the howlers would refill or replace the canteen.

However, a howler had earlier grabbed the canteen and run off with it, then returned it refilled. But Jack wasn't exactly filled with confidence that the howlers would keep doing that. Even if they did, one canteen a day (which was what the current pattern indicated) shared between four people wasn't much. Long term, if the pattern held, they were in trouble.

But, as usual, Daniel had gotten distracted from matters directly pertaining to survival, and he'd taken Carter down with him. Not that Jack couldn't see the value of figuring out how to help the monkeys with their science project, but it seemed like there had to be a way to cut down on the number of steps between here and successful communication with the apes. Communication was essential to finding out exactly what the apes wanted with SG-1, and trying to convince the monkeys to let the team go, and explaining to the howlers that humans have certain needs that have to be met in order for them to thrive. Of course, it was possible the howlers wouldn't care anyway, but there was a chance that the monkeys really didn't know what SG-1 needed, or what the team had come here for.

"Daniel," Jack said, using a tone he knew would get the man's attention.

Daniel looked up and around as if he'd forgotten where he was, and then locked eyes with Jack, "There isn't enough here."

"Come again?"

"Look, the three languages involved are... well I would have said they're completely incompatible," Daniel said, and there was no small amount of agitation in his voice, "They don't even have the same number of letters in their alphabets. You read Portuguese left to right, Aramaic right to left, and don't even get me started on Goa'uld."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Jack muttered.

"And it's not like the first letter makes the same sound in all three languages. Jack, with this small a sample, I can't figure out the rules. I don't know what this says. Even with Sam's help, it's no good. I need... I need _more_."

"Daniel," Jack said, his patience wavering, "What you _need_ is to tell these monkeys that we want to go home, and to convince them that it would be in their best interested to let us do that."

"Jack!" Daniel protested, but Jack interrupted him.

"Daniel!"

At this point, the howlers picked up on the mood, became agitated and started to hoot. The ones on the ground slapped it noisily with their hands, the ones in the trees started to shake the branches.

"Jack, this is what they want to talk about!" Daniel shouted over the growing din, "I don't know why, but this is where I was told to start. So this is where I have to start! Look, I know we're in trouble, alright? I haven't forgotten, but you're not helping!"

Jack bristled at the last, primarily because Daniel had hit the problem dead center. Jack wasn't able to do anything to help. He couldn't translate, didn't have the foggiest what that damned cylinder was for, and so far the only thing he'd managed to accomplish was getting himself and Daniel bitten and attacked repeatedly. He was frustrated by how helpless he was. And when he got frustrated, he got mean. He couldn't help it, it was just how he was wired.

At this point, Carter decided to intervene.

"Look," she said calmly, "You're both frustrated and hungry. We all are, and you two didn't sleep much last night. But you're upsetting the monkeys, and I'm not sure that's such a good idea right now."

Jack and Daniel exchanged looks, and then Daniel nodded. They each took a few deep breaths.

"She's right," Daniel said quietly.

"She's smart that way," Jack replied, lowering his voice as well.

"I'll see if I can get them to understand the concept of 'Eat'," Daniel said, "But it didn't go very well the first time."

"First time?" Carter asked, but Daniel ignored her for the moment.

Instead, Daniel addressed himself to Scar, primarily in elaborate mime supplemented with a simple, single word concept. Jack had seen Daniel's mime act many times over the years of course. The first time it looked stupid. The second time, it also looked stupid. The third time... well suffice it to say that he'd concluded the first thing one had to do in charades was jettison any sense of shame or dignity. Daniel seemed to do this with startling ease.

But Jack noticed Daniel was going through the arm waving and elaborate gesture routine a bit fast, and seemingly with something of an edge, like maybe he was still irritated. After a bit, a couple of howlers gathered around, and started to chatter to one another.

"I'm sorry," Jack said, knowing that Daniel's mood could have a pretty direct effect on the results he got from the apes, "I didn't mean to start shouting. I'm just hungry."

"I'm not mad at you," Daniel said, seemingly taking a break while the monkeys appeared to confer with one another.

"You're not?" Jack asked, "You coulda fooled me."

"No, it's just I've already done this before," Daniel said softly, "And they didn't listen the first time."

"Ah," Jack said, "So you're annoyed with them."

"Yes," Daniel answered, keeping both eyes on Scar.

The other howlers were pairing off, facing one another and taking turns mimicking what Daniel had done, as if by performing the actions themselves, or watching another monkey do it, they thought they might glean something more from it. A smallish howler, more ginger colored than the rest of them, sort of sidled up to Daniel, reached out and tugged at his shirt, then hopped back when he reacted by turning and looking at it, feigning nonchalance by taking a sudden interest in the sky.

Sparing Scar a glance, Daniel turned his attention to the smaller creature. Scar seemed willing to let the inquisitive small howler interact with Daniel.

After a bit, it was evident that Daniel and the little howler were on the same frequency, even if they weren't able to use the same language. The two of them gestured back and forth for awhile, becoming more rapid and intense as they went, sometimes making noises that couldn't qualify as words to punctuate whatever they were talking about.

"That's a lot of gesturing over some bread and water," Jack murmured to Carter.

"I don't think they're still talking about food, sir," Carter replied.

Finally Scar got impatient. He strode over to the pair, then smacked to small howler in the side to gets its attention. The smaller howler began to jabber at him enthusiastically. Scar just stood there, staring at it for a long moment. Finally he grunted, and shambled off toward the gate. Seeing him go, the other howlers in the enclosure got up at once and scampered after him.

Daniel stood and watched them go.

"Well that was productive," Jack remarked sarcastically when the monkeys were gone.

"Have a little faith, Jack," Daniel replied calmly.

"In what?" Jack demanded, "Those demented baboons?"

"In _me_ ," Daniel answered, and when he looked briefly away from the gate and at Jack, he had that look in his eye, the one Jack had finally learned to trust.

"Oh," Jack said, calming down, "Alright."

* * *

Quiet had descended over the course of the afternoon. The howlers had settled down to doing something that required less screeching. Presumably they were eating, and then during the heat of the day settling somewhere shady to wait it out, just like any sensible creatures did.

The enclosure was partially shaded at all times of day, though with the typically high humidity of the jungle, Jack didn't feel like that was a great deal of help. But there did seem to be something woven in with the thorns that made the walls of the enclosure that the local blood suckers didn't care for, and the mosquitoes mostly left them alone if they stayed near the walls. Smelled a bit like lavender, but if it was it was literally thousands of years removed from the varieties on Earth.

"Sir?" Carter said, "Do you think Daniel's okay?"

Other than to sit down, Daniel hadn't moved in hours. While the rest of them had moved closer to the walls, and followed the shade, Daniel had remained fixed and motionless, watching the gate, his confidence apparently unshaken by the growing silence or the passage of time.

"Why wouldn't he be?" Jack asked coolly.

"I heard the two of you last night," Carter persisted, her voice low to keep her remarks from carrying.

"So I gathered," Jack grunted.

"Sir, he's my friend too."

Jack sighed and sat back, looking at her, "He's a tough kid," he said, "And losing Sha're is not his first trip through Hell," he declined to mention that he wasn't sure that was what was really bothering Daniel right now, and said nothing about the phone call just prior to the mission.

"Yes sir, I remember," Carter reminded him quietly.

Carter was not only speaking of times since SG-1 had been formed, she had been there when the Keeper had forced Daniel to relive the death of his parents. Jack hadn't been there, but he knew the depth of the pain that had caused Daniel, because he knew the man so well, and because he'd known much grief of his own in similar ways.

"Have a little patience," Jack admonished, nodding in Daniel's direction, "He knows what he's doing."

"Yes sir," Carter sighed, knowing full well that there was something Jack wasn't saying, but also realizing that she wouldn't be getting anything else out of him.

Jack dozed off and on through the hot, humid afternoon. His skin felt sticky and damp, and the places where his flesh had been pierced by thorn or fang alternately itched and stung when sweat ran across them. But all things considered it qualified only as mildly unpleasant. Jack had been in much worse prisons, even prior to joining SG-1, and certainly since then.

He noticed Carter was either following his example, or concluding for herself that there really wasn't anything to do except pass time. Daniel remained firmly planted, watching the gate. Teal'c did his own thing, which seemed to be primarily conserving energy. Jaffa were much sturdier than humans in many ways, but Jack couldn't help but recall the amount of food Teal'c consumed regularly, and found himself wondering if there might not be a weakness there, as the Jaffa had to eat not only for himself, but for the larva which kept him alive as well. He didn't know what Teal'c's limits were. He'd never asked, and he didn't anticipate that Teal'c would have told him if he had.

Evening fell slowly, and Jack was beginning to think maybe Daniel had been being overly optimistic after all, when there were a series of hoots exchanged by howlers outside the enclosure. Daniel got to his feet a moment before the gate started to open, and the rest of the team followed suit.

Some howlers indistinguishable to Jack from the majority of their kind entered, dragging some woven baskets with lids in between them. The baskets looked about big enough to stuff the Minister's Cat inside, but of course the cat had been described as being both fat and huge the night before. The howlers dragged in three baskets in all, and one of them chattered at Daniel, then the animals left, pulling the gate shut behind them.

The team remained motionless until then. Jack had found out the hard way the day before while Daniel was trying to talk to Scar that there were monkeys on alert, ready to snap at any hands that happened to come near the gate. They'd missed him by a fraction of an inch, but Jack had already had one of them bite his hand, and he wasn't eager to repeat the painful experience.

Daniel was the closest to the baskets, and went to one and knelt beside it. He pulled off the lid, to reveal several varieties of what looked like fruit, only some of which was familiar to Jack.

"I'll be damned," Carter breathed too quietly for anyone but Jack to hear her.

"It's a start," Jack said, loud enough for all to hear.

"I told you," Daniel reminded him.

"And I believed you," Jack replied, "Now let's see if any of this stuff is edible."

Jack had learned on these missions that beggars couldn't be choosers, and you sometimes had to set aside any concerns about how poisonous some plant or meat might be. They still had whatever rations any of them had hidden in their pockets, but he still wanted to conserve that. He also didn't really want the monkeys to know they had the rations, any more than he wanted them picking up on the fact that Jack and Carter were still semi-armed. The less the monkeys knew, the better.

None of the fruit was the kind Jack was willing to write home about, but most of it was pretty juicy (which would make conserving water easier), and seemed fairly nutritious. Daniel tasted some things, then avoided them, saying when asked that it burned. However, Daniel did find some fruit more to his liking and ate that. Since Jack didn't experience that, he had to assume it was an allergic reaction. After all, Daniel was allergic to just about everything, and assuredly whatever antihistamines he'd taken before the mission were long out of his system.

But nobody got sick after eating the fruit, so Jack counted it as a success.

* * *

That night, it was Jack with the dreams. He didn't know when he woke up exactly which dream it had been, he just knew it had left him shaken, sweating and tense, his thoughts focused like a laser on Charlie, on the last time he'd seen his son alive. He let that familiar ache start to spread through him, staring up at the darkened sky, felt its weight on his chest.

A muffle sneeze distracted him, and he sat up, looking around for Daniel. He spotted Daniel sitting across the enclosure, as far away from his sleeping teammates as he could get. Jack got up and wandered over, setting himself down next to Daniel. Daniel sneezed again.

"Next time," Daniel said, sniffing as quietly as he could manage, "I'm putting the antihistamines in my pocket, instead of in my pack."

"That's probably a good idea," Jack whispered back.

"I didn't wake you, did I?" Daniel asked, "I think we kept Sam up last night."

"I think so too," Jack replied, "But no. Three AM's the witching hour on alien planets, you know. Gotta keep a lookout for people whispering incantations or something."

Anybody else would have looked at Jack like they wondered if he was serious and, if so, how many fries were missing from his happy meal. But Daniel just looked at him like he knew. Not just that Jack wasn't being serious, but like he knew the _real_ reason Jack was awake. In his quiet way, he saw Jack was getting mired in the past, stuck in that time that never felt far away, that he felt like he was drowning, and there wasn't a way out because there was nothing to do in here but think, and wait.

Not a day passed that Jack didn't think of Charlie, and he knew that there would always be nights he couldn't sleep for missing the boy, for the life that was lost forever on that fateful day. But mostly he had learned to be grateful for the time he'd had with Charlie, to cherish those memories and to greet each day with humor and lightness, because to do anything less would be to dishonor the memory of his son.

Daniel knew that about Jack, knew that nothing hurt him more than being stuck in past regrets. Sometimes Jack thought Daniel knew him better than he knew himself. And right now, Daniel knew Jack needed a distraction, something to help him get unstuck. When Daniel spoke next, it was with clear reluctance, but a willingness to do whatever was necessary to help Jack out of the dark place he'd fallen into tonight.

"His name is James Chianti," Daniel whispered, his voice barely audible.

Snapped out of reverie, Jack stared at Daniel for a few seconds, not sure what Daniel was on about. In the moment, he'd forgotten the phone call he'd been so interested in, and it seemed like Daniel had just plucked the name out of the air for no reason. It did get Jack's brain to shift gears however, forcing it to scramble to try and figure out what track Daniel had just turned onto.

Jack looked at Daniel quizzically, but the younger man pretended not to notice, purposely keeping Jack 'in the dark' so to speak, forcing the wheels in his brain to start turning, trying to find the context for this apparently random statement. He followed it up with another that was equally unilluminating.

"The name James means 'supplanter'," Daniel said, in his best educator's voice, then added with a quiet laugh that lacked the feel of humor, "I always thought that was a pretty accurate name for a man trying to replace my father. I learned the hard way not to mention _that_ to any child psychologists."

Jack raised both eyebrows, "I don't know what was in that fruit you ate, but I think maybe you shouldn't eat any more of it."

Seeing Jack wasn't getting there on his own, Daniel turned his head and looked right at him, "You wanted to know who called me on the phone before we left. It was James Chianti, the first in a long... _long_ line of foster parents I had."

"I take it your stay with him didn't go well," Jack guessed.

"No," Daniel agreed, with a heavy sigh, "No, it didn't."

Softly, Daniel explained that he hadn't spoken or even thought of James Chianti in years. For the better part of over twenty years, he'd been trying to (and mostly succeeding) forget James Chianti existed.

"The seventies wasn't exactly a good time to be an orphan," Daniel said, understating matters a bit, "My stay with him was supposed to be temporary. Just for a little while, until a next of kin could be located."

"I take it that's not how it worked out," Jack observed.

Jack knew that, of course. Before he'd ever laid eyes on Daniel, he'd read the file that had been put together for the archeologist and linguist who had unlocked the secret of the Stargate. But he had never been aware of the names of any of the foster parents that had taken Daniel in. Either they weren't in the file he'd been given... or he simply hadn't cared then.

"A couple of days turned into a few weeks, and then into a month," Daniel confirmed, "Then a month turned into more than that. Six months, more or less."

Jack shook his head, "That's a long time to an eight-year-old kid. Especially right after losing his parents."

"Eight _and_ nine," Daniel corrected, as though it didn't matter so much.

But Jack understood what that meant immediately. Just like six months was an eternity at that age, birthdays were a huge deal. And Daniel had spent his ninth with a man he had by then learned to fear. Before the death of his parents, Daniel had never really known fear. After, he'd known little else. He didn't have to explain that to Jack. The colonel might not grasp the finer points of ancient history and culture, but he was intimately familiar with the darker aspects of life.

"Most of the people I lived with over the years were nice," Daniel said, again trying to soften the explanation of what had happened to him, "But sooner or later they had to choose between their goals or problems -or their own kids- and me. I guess a kid carrying around as much emotional baggage as I had was a bit of an inconvenience. I knew going in that the arrangements were temporary. I did okay."

Considering his clean record and doctorate achieved at an early age, Daniel had done more than okay. Of course, after getting his doctorate, Daniel had gone on to spout theories that nobody agreed with and so he was ostracized and finally kicked out entirely, which was how he'd landed in the Stargate Program. It was his last resort after he was fired and also kicked out of his apartment. But that was because he refused to be silenced. He'd known he was right, and fought for it.

In the end, he'd landed on his feet.

"Most of the people were nice," Daniel repeated, unusual for him, "But... I guess you probably know what kind of people can be attracted to the foster system. There's more restrictions and better monitoring than there was when I was a kid, but still..." he trailed off.

"How bad?" Jack asked, understanding the implications of Daniel's situation back then without it having to be spelled out in all of its ghastly detail.

Subconsciously, Daniel touched his left side with his hand as he replied, "Bad enough."

Jack didn't miss the gesture, even though Daniel hadn't realized he'd done it. For a moment, a hardness came to his dark eyes, then they softened with sympathy.

"Ah, Danny."

"Anyway," Daniel shrugged, trying to move on quickly, "Until that call, I hadn't heard from James in years. As far as I knew, he was still in prison."

"In prison?" Jack repeated with evident surprise.

"Yeah," Daniel said, "That's how I got out of that house. I got out..." he paused, fending off the unpleasant memory, "And I never looked back. I never heard from him again."

"Until he called you," Jack said.

"Until he called," Daniel confirmed.


	8. Theory

Daniel knew that what he'd said the night before had distracted Jack from whatever personal Hell he'd woken up to, but doing so came with a price. It not only forced Daniel to face those memories he'd been trying to not only ignore but actively forget, but Jack was sure to want to become involved, a reality Daniel found both relieving and horrifying.

Fortunately, he didn't have the time to worry about that right now. The howlers had been up with the dawn, and insured that SG-1 also were. They'd cut Daniel and Sam away from the rest of the team, and herded them out into the jungle. At first it was unclear where they were going, but gradually Daniel began to recognize the terrain, and he realized they were being taken back to the stones.

The howlers had understood that Daniel needed more of the unusual writing in order to translate it. He still wasn't sure what good that would do the monkeys, since they couldn't speak his language nor he theirs, so translating the words so that _he_ could understand them didn't seem all that helpful to the apes. It was almost as if... as if they already knew what was written, but they wanted him to find out. It seemed like an awful lot of work to go to in order to make some strange off-worlders read the local signage. It seemed like there had to be something more than that, something Daniel was missing.

"So where are you on the translations?" Sam asked.

"Pretty much exactly where I was-" he checked his watch, "-an hour ago. I can recognize the individual symbols, but the sentences don't make any sense. See this line here?" he gestured towards one of the stones, "That reads 'the man is indigent'... or possibly 'indecent'. But that doesn't make any sense given the context. Most of what we've got on the device is technical, specs and instructions."

"We think," Sam pointed out, reminding Daniel that they'd been unable to made much headway with the device by itself either.

He forged on, "This sentence doesn't make any sense taken in context with everything else. It also doesn't seem to apply to this device in any meaningful way, unless it somehow sucks your clothes off when activated, which is hardly in keeping with Goa'uld technology."

"I suppose that would be one way to catch your enemies off-guard. Nobody would be expecting that," Sam said, "Though pantsing seems a little bit juvenile."

"A little bit," Daniel agreed.

He knew Sam was annoyed. Not with him, but with the fact that she really couldn't help him all that much. Because he'd brought her in on the device, the howlers seemed to think she was his assistant now or something. But there wasn't much for her to do, aside from try to look busy so they wouldn't get pissed off with her.

The scarred howler and the ginger one were evidently following other pursuits, as they hadn't shown up today. But a half dozen black howlers had herded them out here, and now hung from the tree branches, watching them carefully. Neither Sam nor Daniel needed a refresher course on how fast and strong these monkeys were, and they had decided not to try making any trouble for the moment.

The both of them had kind of been hoping this would be one of those times General Hammond would decide to throw the protocol manual out the window, and come looking for them with UAVs or maybe even another team. But if he had, that was probably long over and the camp of the monkeys was too far away. SG-1 was a team with undeniably incredible luck, but an unsung part of that were the almost flawless instincts General Hammond had for what the team was doing, where they were and what had happened to them. It sometimes seemed to Daniel like General Hammond had known them all much longer than they had known him, and of course -in a way- he actually had.

Daniel straightened and stretched, noticing the muscles in his back had numerous complaints he'd been ignoring for several hours, primarily having to do with the way he'd been hunched over studying the markings on the various stones. Sam handed him their shared water canteen, and he drank from it, then passed it back. The howlers had been smart enough to realize that Daniel and Sam would need water while they were out here, and had fetched a second canteen, which had been given to them after they were driven out of the enclosure. If only the monkeys could do something about the bugs beyond the protective walls of the enclosure. Both Daniel and Sam were getting pretty badly chewed up.

Daniel had also briefly tried to communicate that he needed his antihistamines, but that was too far a leap communication-wise. Maybe he could've gotten there with the small ginger howler, who seemed to be better at charades than the rest of the monkeys, but that she wasn't around today.

"There's _got_ to be something I'm missing," Daniel murmured, wandering from one stone to the next, looking for something, some sort of inspiration that would make this all make sense.

But he was two nights without much sleep, he had a headache, and was continually clearing his throat just so he could breathe, sometimes stopping to sneeze and cough. His brain was foggy, he could barely see without his glasses, and he was beginning to think he was just spinning his wheels, getting nowhere fast because the howlers had such a dogged preoccupation with this device that they were barely willing to even briefly entertain any attempt at communication that wasn't obviously related to it.

Daniel had had a breakthrough with the one howler yesterday, and that one hadn't shown up today. He and Jack had finally put a dent in Scar's thick-headedness, and suddenly he wasn't around either, and they were being split up again. It was like the howlers didn't even understand how progress had been made, or like they didn't _want_ progress to be made at all. But that being the case, they were working awfully hard to try and get _something_ out of Daniel. He just didn't understand, and he was getting to be too tired to try to figure it out.

Patiently, Sam sat and watched him.

The two of them had gotten on well immediately, in fact Daniel couldn't remember anyone else he'd so immediately made such a positive connection with. Sam's expertise was astrophysics, Daniel's was archeology, and normally the two fields would never have crossed over. But thanks to the Stargate Program, they had a lot in common, and were frequently working closely, especially when their secondary skills came into play, Sam's being engineering and Daniel's linguistics. It was amazing how often on missions all of their skills were needed and worked in tandem. Under any other circumstances, Daniel and Sam would probably have found it impossible to really relate to one another. But the Stargate had a way of bridging gaps and bringing disparate personalities together for a common goal. Of course, it didn't hurt any that Sam was one of the nicest, sweetest, most compassionate people Daniel had ever met, all this in addition to her brilliance and toughness as a scientist and member of the Air Force.

At first, their immediate and overt friendliness towards one another had seemed to disturb Jack. Daniel had been the first to figure out that Jack and Sam had an attraction going on, that they were both in vehement denial of, but he'd known better than to say anything. He'd also eventually realized it was deeper than that. Jack didn't make friends easily, and he guarded them jealously. He'd never admit it, but the colonel had been afraid he might lose Daniel to Sam. But what had actually happened was that all four members of SG-1 had built a team based not only on trust and respect, but deepest affection for one another. They were family. Daniel realized that Jack had been the first to actually realize how close they all were to one another, probably because he had the most experience in team bonding.

Certainly it had taken Daniel quite awhile to accept that the rest of the team cared about him just as much as he cared about them. He wasn't used to people looking out for him, and it had at first rattled and even scared him. The reality was that Daniel didn't make friends any more easily than Jack. Rather, he tended to meet people who knew they could use him, and liked him for that reason. He had trouble believing that he could have value to people beyond his skills. It had frightened him at first. Frightened him because he was scared to believe it, and even more scared it might go away.

But the things he'd been through, seen and done with SG-1 had made him confident they'd always have his back, as he would have theirs. And that in turn made him feel confident even now, under these conditions, that they'd be alright. SG-1 could handle some monkeys. They just needed to figure out... how they were going to do that. So far, Daniel had come up empty.

* * *

"What if we're going about this all wrong?" Daniel wondered aloud, mainly to himself.

Sam had been watching him in silence for hours. She'd only spoken to him when he'd stopped or appeared ready to take a break, otherwise she had not interrupted. But Daniel had become so deeply absorbed in what he was doing that the thought of taking a break hadn't occurred to him in some while.

"What do you mean?" Sam asked.

"What if," Daniel paused to climb over a nearly crumbled stone to reach where Sam had been sitting and waiting, then resumed, "What if they're not after a translation? What would they do with a translation if they got one?" he waved in the general direction of a couple of howlers that had seemed on the verge of falling asleep but were now eying him suspiciously, "They don't speak English. What good would it do them? What's the point?"

"Okay," Sam said, "I'm with you. So what _do_ they want?"

Elated by the admission, Daniel answered, "I have no idea."

Years of working with ancient history had taught Daniel that not knowing what you were looking for, or not understanding what something meant was often a sign that you were closer to the answers than ever before. The less he thought he knew, the more excited he became. It was those pieces that didn't fit which had always interested him, the not knowing, the compelling nature of mysteries in the past. He'd been accused of saying the pyramids were built by little green men, but the reality was that -prior to going through the Stargate- all he'd been saying was that the pyramids were much older than commonly believed, and that unlocked a veritable treasure trove of questions, showing things commonly held up as facts for the almost baseless speculations they really were. Not knowing was the greatest thing that could ever happen in Daniel's line of work, but almost nobody seemed to realize it, always eager to have all the answers before they uncovered enough evidence to even ask the right questions.

A bemused look came into Sam's eyes.

She was one of the few, the magnificent and brilliant few, who knew that not knowing was the beginning of the greatest adventure when it came to unlocking the secrets of the universe. Daniel had come at the Stargate from an archeological point of view, Sam from the view of an astrophysicist, but they had both come to the same conclusion: the people who'd been studying the Stargate before them had been too biased, too set in their ways, too certain of their facts. The Stargate was the gateway not just to other planets, but other ways of thinking, mysteries of the universe that those logical minds who had failed to open the door to other worlds would have thought were beyond the realm of human comprehension.

But Sam also knew their situation was a dire one, and this was not the ideal time to be starting over from scratch. Especially since doing so might just tick off their captors. She knew that it was easy to lose sight of reality after entering the wonderland of discovery. She also knew only too well how deeply involved Daniel became with his work. Daniel would not only forget about sleeping and eating, he would continue working even if the world was literally falling to pieces around him. That determination was one of his most valuable assets, but it was also one of his greatest weaknesses, one that SG-1 and Jack in particular had saved him from more than once.

Absently, Daniel held his injured arm with his good hand, thinking. The bite wound was throbbing a bit, as was the part of his head where the howler had struck him, which wasn't exactly a surprise. The pain was a minor distraction, for his mind was racing along this new course, coming up with alternative theories and discarding them almost as quickly. He was only vaguely aware of the fact that Sam was watching him with obvious concern, wondering what he was thinking.

Daniel started to pace, an unconscious reflection of what was going on in his mind as he followed one thought trail, realized it was the wrong one, backtracked and headed down another. It hadn't been until he'd joined SG-1 that he'd started really having to build up physically, at which time he'd found a notable connection between exercise and the clearing of thoughts. He'd always paced when he was forming ideas and then trying to explain them, but he'd never thought about why that was. Not until he'd started having most of his breakthroughs in the gym at the SGC. Now whenever he was stalled out, he found some way to move around.

Suddenly he stopped, and turned to Sam, "It's the device they're interested in."

"We knew that already," Sam pointed out.

"But did we understand _why_?" Daniel fired back.

"Why?" Sam asked, her brow furrowing.

"I assumed maybe they wanted us to explain how the device worked, or maybe to understand how it worked before we walked off with it. But what if there's another reason?"

"Like what?" Sam evidently wasn't following Daniel on this one.

"What if they want us to use it?"

He could see his own fear reflected in her eyes. That fear was of the unknown. Not knowing what the device actually did, they couldn't know what it might mean if the howlers actually wanted them to use it. SG-1 hadn't exactly built a great track record from messing around with devices they didn't understand. It wasn't even as simple as playing with fire, since you could not only wind up burned or dead, you could wind up with an alien consciousness, you could end up body swapped, you could get sent to an alternate reality... any number of bad things could happen.

"Maybe we're taking the wrong lead," Daniel further suggested.

Sam didn't answer that, merely looked worried about what he would say.

For Daniel, there was only one way he could figure out what the device did, and that was figuring out this written language. But for Sam, there might be another way.

"Maybe we should take a closer look at the inside of that device."

Sam looked like that was exactly what she'd been afraid he would say.

* * *

Daniel had done as much as he could to help Sam, doing his best with his feeble understanding of this melded language to be sure that any panel she wanted to remove to get to the interior of the device wasn't marked with the equivalent of "DANGER: risk of electrocution" before she pulled it off.

Beneath those panels was a layout of tech that looked faintly familiar to Daniel. He'd never been much of a tech guy, but three years fighting the Goa'uld (not counting Ra) had taught him to recognize the colored crystals that seemed to be the basis for the majority of Goa'uld tech. Of course, even without that, he could have guessed the device was of Goa'uld origin, simply because over a third of the symbols etched on it were from a very old Goa'uld dialect.

The percentage bothered him. On the stones, the three root languages had all merged equally and seamlessly. On the device, Goa'uld dominated, to such a degree that he could actually pick out some words. And something else caught his attention now he was looking for warning labels.

What caught his eye as looking like warnings or caution labels were written slightly larger, bolder, and almost entirely in Goa'uld, except for certain portions that had been carefully scratched out and written over. He hadn't noticed the scratching before. The melded language was... it was almost like it had been scrawled into the margins at a later date than the original labels, none of which explained what the device did, what it was for or how it worked; evidently assuming that anyone holding it would already know that. He was guessing the extra writing in the margins might not be assuming the same thing.

After that, he'd gone back to the stones, but found he wasn't able to concentrate. The panels on the device were nagging at him. There was something there, he was sure of it. Sam had become so engrossed in examining the device's interior that she didn't notice when Daniel took the outside panels and laid them out side by side in the dirt, then stood back to stare at them, frowning.

The monkeys noticed, and chattered a bit, probably because Sam and Daniel had been brought out here to look at the stones, the device they could have looked at back at the camp. But Daniel didn't notice the monkeys and after chattering at each other for a bit, they settled back down. Perhaps they figured their job was just to bring their captives here and make sure they didn't run off, and anything else was outside their job description. Or maybe they realized Daniel was onto something.

That was all well and good, if Daniel could figure out what it was.

* * *

"Daniel!" the sound of Sam's voice drew him out of his concentration.

He looked around, blinking, having half-forgotten where he was. Sam was of course right where he'd left her, kneeling beside the cylinder. She waved him over. Reluctantly, he left the panels he'd been staring at, and came to sit beside her and look at the device.

"Do you know what this looks like to me?" Sam asked.

Daniel thought for a moment, then shook his head.

"You remember the device Ma'chello invented for body swapping?" Sam asked.

Involuntarily, Daniel recoiled a bit from the cylinder. He most certainly _did_ remember that. The thought that this was anything like it filled him with an unexpected horror. Switching bodies hadn't been his idea of a good time, even if he'd spent most of it in a coma.

"I don't think it's the same device," Sam said hurriedly, well aware of what Daniel had gone through, "But I think it -or something like it- may have provided the inspiration for that device. Certain parts of it look very similar to what Ma'chello invented."

"Okay," Daniel said, making himself relax a bit, "So what's it for?"

"I'm not sure," Sam answered with an unhappy look, "But we also know the Goa'uld have experimented with genetics more than once, and I think this device may have been a tool they used to do that."

"What kind of genetic experiments?" Daniel asked, his revulsion and curiosity now waging war, with no certain outcome as to which would win.

Both he and Sam could of course list examples they'd found, of devices, of people and in literature. They were intimately aware of the Goa'uld's desire for a 'perfect' host, and much of what that implied. But that didn't necessarily explain what exactly this particular device was for.

Sam shook her head, "I'm not sure," then she looked up and nodded towards the monkeys, "But I think maybe they know... or want to know. I think you're right; this is what they wanted us to figure out."

"What makes you say that?" Daniel wanted to know.

"Daniel... I'm not sure those monkeys... _are_ monkeys."

Daniel understood at once what Sam was implying, but some part of his brain rejected it as impossible, and he sat there blinking at her in silence for a bit while he tried to keep a grip on his normally open mind, which was struggling to be closed to this concept, citing it as ludicrous and -in layman's terms- nuts. Sam gazed at him steadily, and it seemed like she was actually hoping Daniel would find some way to reject her theory. It was a horrible thought, and neither of them wanted to accept the possibility, even though they had both surely seen enough in their time to realize it wasn't as unlikely as they would have preferred to believe.

"Oh," Daniel said finally, because there didn't seem to be any other words in his admittedly massive vocabulary that could be used in this instance.

"Yeah," Sam replied, apparently unable to think of any suitable words herself.

* * *

Sickening as it was, Sam's theory actually did help. With this potential context in mind, Daniel began to gain traction in his translation work. Since he now had some idea as to what the writing might be describing, he was able to make educated guesses about what certain words were, or what the sentences might be implying. It looked like whatever was written on the stones was connected, possibly a historical record of the device's construction and initial use.

He wasn't far enough along to be sure, and he didn't have the tools he would normally, so he couldn't make notes or scribble down theories, instead having to keep it all in his head, just as Sam was doing from her scientific angle, making the work a lot harder for both of them. But in a way, despite the danger and the grim nature of what they were studying, they were both having a great time. This was exactly the kind of challenge they had signed on for, aside from the obvious saving the world mission.

Deeply absorbed in their work, neither of them was aware any longer of being bitten by mosquitoes, they had no concept of where the sun was in the sky, they forgot to stop regularly to drink water and didn't even notice that their stomachs were empty and complaining. Daniel was no longer cognizant of his headache or the fact that he periodically went into a sneezing fit; these distractions were so minor as to not even be noticeable now he was making progress on his work.

Eventually, as it started to get dark, the howlers became agitated, and then finally started pushing them back in the direction of the camp. Sam managed to pick up the device as she was herded away, but the howlers at the rear of the procession picked up the panels from it before scurrying up into the trees. Like true monkeys, they seemed to prefer being off the ground whenever possible, but were willing to make allowances for the fact that neither Sam nor Daniel could travel that way.

As few howlers as they deemed necessary stayed on the ground to prod the captives in the right direction, and they regularly cycled off, a pair coming down from the trees, then a pair formerly on ground duty climbing up the trees and disappearing into their branches. Outside the camp, the howlers seemed to find being on the ground rather like being on point. It occurred to Daniel only now to wonder what it was they were afraid of, because he didn't think it was him or Sam.

Whatever was out there in the jungle, if it was powerful enough to take on the howler troop, surely it was a threat to any humans wandering around as well. Sam might have had the same thought, in any case the two of them kept quiet and alert on the way back.

Back at the camp, there were hoots and howls of greeting from the monkeys that hadn't gone out today, and responses from the returning monkeys who'd been on guard duty. It seemed more than just a casual greeting though. It seemed to Daniel that they were conveying complex ideas. Maybe it was just his new-found bias with the thought that their ancestors might once have been human, but it felt like conversations were intense, varied and meaningful and he could almost grasp what they were saying, though of course he would never be able to repeat it.

Prior to the 1960's, there had been attempts to teach apes to speak, including attempting to raise them as if they were human children. Most of these experiments not only failed, they ended in tragedy. There was a general consensus among scientists of the time that apes were not capable of learning language, and that was why they could not speak. But some more open minded souls took it upon themselves to prove that theory false. They contended that the reason apes didn't speak was because they were literally physically incapable of it. So instead they had taught their apes sign language, and met with success that rocked the world of science, and in particular psychology. Heretofore, speech had been unique to humans, with lesser beast deemed lesser because of what they could not do. Signing apes and parrots learning to use labels changed everything that scientists thought they knew about the animal world; and they hadn't liked it a bit.

But even if these apes used a sign language, Daniel hadn't been able to pick up on its nuances yet, and he would be unable to make the same vocalizations as the howlers for the same reason they could not mimic him. The design of their vocal apparatus was simply too different. Parrots also had a completely different design from humans, so they could not learn to speak by example but instead had to listen to the sounds humans made and manipulate their voice box until they got it right; but the vocal systems of a parrot were wonderfully complex, and nobody quite understood how they worked. Humans and apes were far more limited in the range of sounds they could produce, and there was little overlap.

So far there had been little evidence that the howlers wanted to learn to communicate with SG-1. All their moves so far had been for SG-1 to learn to communicate with them. But, by the laws of biology, even if Daniel could learn to understand the language of the howlers, he would not be able to speak it; no matter how smart he was or how hard he might try, he would be functionally unable to communicate with them using their language. The task was impossible.


	9. Discussions with the Monkey

"So what you're saying is that you think _those_ things are human?" Jack asked, gesturing emphatically towards the trees where the howlers were roaring their evening chorus.

It wasn't that the concept was so unbelievable, it was just that Jack wasn't convinced he'd heard right, because it didn't seem like it made any damn sense. Why would the Goa'uld take humans from more than one area of Earth, probably at different times, and then turn them into monkeys? Granted, the Goa'uld had done some pretty trippy experiments, and of course when in doubt you could always explain their actions by reminding yourself that they were pure evil ego, but this... this was some sort of cartoony comic book nonsense that Jack wasn't adequately prepared to believe.

He wasn't enjoying a bit that it sounded like his joke about a planet where apes evolved from men was beginning to sound plausible, especially since he was pretty sure he'd read that comic in the late fifties or early sixties when he was a kid. Something about some mind controlling gorilla wanting to take over the world or something. He'd never been a big fan of comics. Well... not a _really_ big fan.

"It's the only thing that makes sense," Carter said.

Except the aforementioned part where it patently _didn't_ make sense.

"Okay, let's say for the moment I'm going with you on this journey," Jack said with a patient sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose to try and fend off the headache growing behind his eyes, then looking from Carter to Daniel in the twilight, "Which I remind you is a big ask..."

He paused for dramatic effect, and also to see if anyone would argue. They didn't.

"What does the gorilla army want with us?"

"Howler monkeys aren't gorillas," Daniel corrected, apparently from reflex.

"And, according to the two of you, those aren't howler monkeys," Jack retorted.

"We haven't figured that out, sir," Carter said in response to Jack's question.

"Yet," Daniel added quickly.

"Is it not possible that these creatures' ancestors are your howlers monkeys, genetically manipulated to be larger and more powerful?" Teal'c inquired passively.

Carter made one of those cute faces she made when she didn't want to hurt someone's feelings by saying their theory was phenomenally unlikely, but she was pretty sure they were wrong.

"It's _possible_ ," Carter said slowly and gently, "But so far everything Daniel and I think we've found doesn't point to that."

Teal'c inclined his head slightly, while Jack said, "Everything you _think_ you've found?"

"We've only just started unlocking the secrets of the device and that melded language," Carter said defensively, "We need time to be sure."

"Time we may not have if the monkeys decide we look delicious," Jack retorted sourly.

"Sir," Carter said, "I don't want to be here any more than you do. But I think Daniel's right; figuring out that device and why the howlers want us to understand it may be our only way home."

"Just so long as we know where we stand," Jack remarked stiffly.

"In a cage made of thorns, surrounded by apes with very sharp teeth that may or may not want to kill us," Daniel spoke up quickly, "Yes, Jack, we know," he then repeated the last more gently and with less irritation, " _We_ _know_."

"Well," Jack said, deciding to give them the win, for the moment, "Just so long as we _all_ know."

"We do, sir," Carter assured him.

* * *

That night, none of them could sleep. Daniel and Carter were too excited by what they'd learned, their minds spinning with new possibilities and ideas and theories they just couldn't wait for morning to discuss. Pretty soon the pair of them gave up trying to pretend to sleep, and retreated to the far side of the enclosure to try and not disturb Jack, who couldn't be disturbed because he wasn't sleeping either.

He lay on his back, staring up at the alien stars, wondering if anyone else had the same feeling he did, which was that this was all going to end in blood somehow. He hoped he was wrong, mainly because the howlers had so far won every battle virtually uncontested, making them very dangerous adversaries. Besides, there were so many of them, and so few of SG-1.

While Carter and Daniel had spent the day being geeky, Jack had spent most of it being bored, and watching the monkeys interact overhead. He was getting to know their sounds, not as complex communication, but as the same sort of simple yet surprisingly multifaceted signals dogs used.

He'd watched howlers puff themselves up, flatten their bodies, rock their heads back or turn them to the side, slowly tense their facial muscles to show their teeth versus a quick flash, low growling and high yelping, tails raised and lowered, flicking or still. With dogs, a message was never conveyed solely by one part of the body. Contrary to popular belief, a wagging tail alone signaled nothing of the dog's mood. A stiffly wagging, highly held tail could mean the dog was about to attack. A tucked, fast and limply waving tail could mean the dog was about to pee itself and bolt in fear. Without taking the ears, eyes, mouth, face, neck and rest of the body into account, the tail alone signaled nothing clear. But Jack was good with dogs, and he'd found that the ability to read dogs gave him the ability to make educated guesses about the body language of virtually all Earth animals, and even humans to a degree.

Daniel might think context and intimate understanding of language was necessary for communication and -to a degree- he wasn't wrong. But even without knowing what associations one howler had with another, or understanding what "words" were exchanged, Jack could see when casual gestures ascended into abrupt, fierce violence. In fact, the unusually violent nature of the howlers lent credence to the assertion that they were former humans. Most signaling between animals was to avoid violence, but the howlers seemed to go after one another with some regularity, though most of it was just slapping each other rather than actually trying to hurt each other. But that was still a step above simply yelling at each other and posturing, which they also did a lot.

Jack didn't need to know their names or favorite colors to see how quick they were to attack. In fact, observing the howlers in the trees, Jack began to wonder if perhaps Scar hadn't been being inordinately patient with them by the standards of his kind. That wasn't a comforting thought.

Even if Carter did figure out what that device did (given enough time, Jack had no doubt about whether or not she could, he just wasn't sure she'd have that time), it was possible she couldn't make it do whatever the howlers wanted her to make it do. And then... _and then_ SG-1 would be in trouble, because the howlers seemed to have one response to things not going their way, and that was to take out their frustrations on the cause. Barred from that by social hierarchy, they would take out their frustrations on the nearest subordinate. As prisoners, SG-1 was under everyone else in the social ranking system by definition. These monkeys got angry, and it was going to be their hide.

Jack had never been overfond of apes, and it wasn't because of that psycho-nonsense about how human they looked being disturbing to man's ego. It was because of the horrible shrieking noises they made when they fought, the unnaturally large teeth that most of them seemed to have in spite of being advertised as vegetarians (many of them were omnivores, and some were even predatory), and the fact that even a thirty-pound ape was powerful enough to rip a man's arm from its socket and beat him to death with it. And also that thing they did with their lips. That just wasn't right.

He wondered how Teal'c could take it. The dark Jaffa had resisted most of Jack's attempts at conversation, seeming content to pass the time in motionless silence. But for Jack, the boredom was unbearable, and the worrying was pointless and circular. He had to pick what he was going to think about, because his thoughts naturally liked to descend into a dark place that was hard to get out of once he was in it. In avoiding thinking about the worst parts of his own life, he found himself wondering what had happened to Daniel. What that man had done to him. And that was perhaps the most pointless thing of all, since it was not only allowing his imagination to get away from him, it was worrying about something that had already happened, and there was no point to that because you couldn't change the past. Or, to be more accurate, you _shouldn't_ change the past. Time travel was a bitch.

But he couldn't quite pull himself away from thinking about it. The way Daniel had gone pale when he'd answered that phone arrested Jack's memory. The fear in Daniel's blue eyes, the haunted sound in his voice when he'd talked about it last night to distract Jack. Even without words to fill in the blanks, Jack could hear and see. Sometimes Daniel spoke the loudest when he said nothing at all.

It was bizarre to think that Jack had once been so deep in his own grief and suicidal thoughts that he'd been unable to see Daniel for who he was. On that first trip to Abydos, he'd missed the loneliness in Daniel's eyes, somehow failed to hear the intense desire to belong somewhere, _anywhere_ in his voice. Jack had been purposely building a wall to keep the world out because he couldn't bear the pain of losing his son. But it seemed that the world had built a wall to keep Daniel out of it. Daniel was naturally a bright, cheerful sort of guy, a little absorbed in his work, a little bit obsessive, a little bit crazy, but gentle and empathetic. When others hurt, Daniel hurt along with them. It was how he was built. Jack had tried hard not to wonder what sort of life had created someone like that.

For some reason, it seemed like the gentlest, kindest souls always went through the most torment.

Not wanting to think about it, Jack sat up and went over to eavesdrop on what Daniel and Carter were talking about. They were deep into that weird geeky way of being, wherein they seemed to speak in partial sentences, thinly veiled references to things only they knew about, and a kind of melded language of their own as Carter spoke in science and Daniel in several dead languages. Jack had more than once observed that, once Carter and Daniel were in sync on something they were working on, they ceased having to stop and explain terms to each other. Each just _knew_ what the other meant. It was kind of eery to listen to, and Jack sometimes wondered if Babel fish weren't somehow involved.

Neither Carter nor Daniel seemed to especially notice that Jack had joined them, which was just as well because he didn't actually have anything to add. Daniel did briefly glance his way, and there seemed to be an understanding in his eyes that Jack wasn't here to talk, that he hadn't come to complain about the noise either, that he just wanted to be, to hear the voices of his teammates and be reassured by their presence and what for them qualified as "normalcy." Perhaps out of her own awareness, Carter pretended she didn't notice Jack had joined them at all. Acknowledging him would require a reminder of rank and association, and neither Jack nor Carter wanted that right here and now.

An amount of time passed during which Carter and Daniel continued to talk and pretend they hadn't noticed Jack, somehow without really ignoring him. And then Teal'c silently joined them, coming to stand at Jack's side. Jack gestured for him to sit and join them, but Teal'c showed no inclination to do so and remained standing, but silent. Even though nobody looked at Teal'c or spoke to him and he himself said nothing, he was as inexplicably but undeniably included in the group as Jack was.

This was the part of SG-1 that outsiders couldn't see, that couldn't be explained or defined to anyone, yet was real and had substance, and could be felt by whoever was close enough to them. Not physically speaking, of course. Plenty of people physically touched members of SG-1 without ever touching on what really made them special. It was the kind of closeness you couldn't see, like what General Hammond had with them, all hidden behind rank designations and formalities and distance, but real just the same. Nobody outside of SG-1 understood them as individuals or a team better than General George S. Hammond. And, Jack suspected, nobody ever would.

"It's obvious," Daniel's sudden pronouncement yanked Jack out of the doze he'd sort of fallen into.

"Is it?" Jack inquired, almost reflexively.

Daniel turned toward him as if he'd expected exactly this question, even though Jack had been there half the night by then without ever having said a word.

"I can't communicate with them using speech or signing," Daniel said, "We know that."

"So what are you gonna do?" Jack asked rather sarcastically, but without putting any real energy in it because he was still partially asleep, "Make some pheromones like your peripheral exclamations and have them smell those?"

"Polistes exclamans," Daniel corrected, but would not distracted, "And no. It's been right in front of us all along. I just missed it because they ignored me the first time."

"Well don't keep us in suspense," Jack admonished, "Share with the rest of the class."

"Writing."

Of course. Daniel had tried writing almost right away, when Scar was still dicking around with him. He also hadn't known how to merge the three alphabets into the single written language, which he presumably did now, and so far the howlers had seemed to expect the members of SG-1 to cover the gap between the two species' ways of communication without being met halfway. The howlers sat back and made the team do the work communication-wise. But had Daniel really learned enough of that language to effectively write it? Jack didn't doubt it. When it came to languages and written symbols, Jack had come to believe there was nothing Daniel could not do.

"What are you going to say?" Carter asked after a moment.

Daniel sighed, and Jack knew what he was going to say before he said it:

"I have no idea."

For once, Daniel didn't sound particularly delighted by that admission. For once, he sounded worried by uncertainty, weary of trying to think, discouraged by the failure that had plagued him from the start. He also sounded like he was about to sneeze, which he did a second later.

"Just," Jack began, then paused until Daniel looked blearily in his direction, "tell them who we are, why were here. Ask them what they want with us. You know, your basic alien ice breakers," he then added, primarily for the humor, "Just, whatever you do, don't talk about sports; you're not good at it."

Daniel nodded thoughtfully, and repeated, "No sports."

"Absolutely not," Jack confirmed, "Oh, and ask them to give back your antihistamines. Hopefully they're as tired of listening to you sneeze as we are."

Daniel kind of looked at him for a moment, like wasn't sure whether or not Jack was joking. He then seemed to conclude that the remark was one of those that was half in jest, and accepted it.

Daniel nodded again and said, "Right..."

* * *

As if they had somehow recognized what the team had done yesterday or even last night, the howlers did not attempt to drag Carter and Daniel back out to the ruins. Instead of the usual horde of monkeys pouring in, this time when the gate opened, only one entered. The little wiry one that was more ginger than black. It was funny to Jack that he had at first seen no difference between one howler and another, when this one was clearly much smaller and differently colored, and meeker in mannerisms than the rest. Jack was thinking maybe the brown eyes were a little paler too.

Ginger walked into the enclosure, ignoring the chattering of the howlers in the trees, and seemingly fearless, despite the fact that one howler alone against the entirety of SG-1 stood little chance, even aside from the knives that two of them still had concealed on their persons. Reaching the center of the enclosure, Ginger sat down, and looked at Daniel as if expecting him to make the next move.

As if she already knew.

It occurred to Jack as Daniel went and sat across from Ginger in the dirt that the little howler was a female, whereas Scar was obviously and overtly male. He wondered if that accounted for the difference in size and color. He couldn't say he'd been paying close attention to what gender the majority of the howlers were. If the ginger coloration was unique to females, this was the only one they had seen. Jack couldn't help but wonder why only one, whether red was a female look or not. Why only one?

Daniel looked at the ground for a moment, then started drawing in the dirt. Jack recognized some of the writing, because portions of it used the Latin alphabet. He was also passably familiar with Goa'uld, not enough to read it really, but enough to recognize it when he saw it, and to know some of the warning labels when he saw them. Aramaic didn't look like anything but squiggly lines to him however. It flitted briefly through his mind that it was strange for him to know more of an alien language than one from Earth. But taken in context, maybe it wasn't so strange after all.

When Daniel had finished and leaned back, Ginger sat a moment, then scampered carefully around the writing to sit beside Daniel. It had been upside down for her until she moved to his angle. Still, it seemed very trusting of her to sit so close to Daniel.

Had it been Jack, it would have been the perfect opportunity to try and take a hostage using his knife... only he wasn't sure the howlers worked that way. They were just as likely to respond violently to threats as cooperatively. Possibly they wouldn't even understand the concept. When an animal saw someone it cared about in danger, the instinct was to attack the danger, and the animal couldn't understand that doing so might put the someone they cared about in more danger. Formerly human or not, it was unclear how much and what kind of intelligence the howlers had.

In any case, Jack felt a keen disinclination to assault this particular howler, not because she was female, but because she had been the only one so far that hadn't been jerking them around. From the start, she had seemed earnest in her attempts to communicate on even a minimal level with Daniel. It was through her that certain breakthroughs were achieved. Ginger had been the closest thing they'd had to an ally this entire time, and Jack was not one of those who could justify gaining the advantage at any cost under most circumstances. Not when there were other options.

Ginger cocked her head, looking at what Daniel had written. After a moment, she reached out and confidently altered some of the lettering. She hooted softly and looked at Daniel, as if checking to see whether or not he'd gotten it. Apparently the subtle changes also altered the meaning of what Daniel had said, because he erased and rewrote part of it. Ginger's eyes widened slightly and she made a little chirping sound in her throat, like she was thinking aloud.

She scooted back a pace, and wrote something under what Daniel had written. Daniel looked at it, and a quizzical look crossed his face. He wrote a short sentence that seemed to be an inquiry or request for clarification. Ginger erased a part of what she'd written, and apparently rephrased it. Daniel made a grunt of comprehension that sounded approximately like what Jack had heard the howlers do with each other sometimes, though he hadn't entirely realized what they were doing.

The process repeated, slowly at first, then with increasing pace as the two refined their written communication. From time to time they would pause and exchange words. Or, more accurately, Daniel would point to some writing and say a word or some words. Ginger would make some monkey sounds that were apparently words to the howlers, but hers seemed to be entire sentences based on the indication, like very short sounds contained a depth of meaning beyond what humans could do with single words most of the time. It was apparently an imperfect science, because every sound the howlers made changed its meaning depending on their intonation and the rest of their body language, whereas each word Daniel spoke had a strict dictionary definition regardless of what inflection he put on it.

Jack recalled that some of the Goa'uld language was like that. What few words of Goa'uld Jack thought he knew varied in their meaning depending on context and what other words might be strung into the sentence. From what he'd picked up off Teal'c and Daniel, Goa'uld was itself an impossible language, though Daniel said it was actually relatively simple once you grasped a few basic rules. Jack had mostly learned enough to know which buttons not to touch in the Pel'tak of a Ha'tak vessel.

In any case, Jack had no real concept of what Daniel and Ginger were talking about.

He just hoped the good doctor hadn't gotten distracted from the important stuff and started asking about the history and culture of the Bandar-Log while he was at it. The last thing he wanted to hear was that Daniel had come to appreciate their primitive but elegant society and wanted to stay. Actually _the last_ thing he wanted to hear right now was that they were being fattened up for Thanksgiving like turkeys. But the other thing was somewhere near the top of the list of things he didn't want to hear.

He reminded himself that right now, Daniel had a mission given to him by his wife upon her death. So long as he had that floating somewhere in his mind, he was unlikely to suddenly decide to become one with the ape men. In fact, his focus in recent days had actually been a little bit scary because it wasn't like him. Being absent-minded and scatterbrained was par for the course with Daniel, but it occurred to Jack as he watched Daniel "talk" to Ginger that, in some ways, he really wasn't the same guy Jack had met all those years ago at the SGC when it was still mostly just an empty missile silo.

Looking at Daniel's face, especially the look in his eyes, Jack decided maybe he didn't have to worry.

Finally, just as Jack was beginning to think he might die from the boredom, Daniel reached out to write something, and Ginger stopped him, arresting the motion by grabbing his wrist with her hand. Daniel was obviously startled, the last time he'd actually been touched by one of the howlers was when Scar had gone after Jack and he'd gotten in the way. He looked at Ginger's eyes, trying to read her intention, and she looked back in a surprisingly human way.

Daniel sat back and withdrew his hand, and Ginger let go. Then she got up silently and went towards the gate, which was opened by howlers on the outside. She left without looking back or making another sound. Jack watched her go, then turned to Daniel.

"Well that was exciting," he muttered sarcastically.

"Actually it was," Daniel replied, "We can finally start talking to them."

"Start?" Jack sputtered, " _Start_? What the hell was all that writing if not starting?"

"Laying the foundation," Daniel said, "I needed to learn enough of her language to get her interested in learning mine, and make sure she realized I could learn to understand the sounds she makes, but I can't make them."

"That's _it_?" Jack demanded, astonished at the amount of time taken to convey so little.

"Her people have all spoken a single language for so long we're lucky they could even guess that we're not just making random sounds. Though actually the real luck is that one of the three languages they use in writing uses the Latin alphabet," he indicated the shoulder patch on his jacket, "They recognized some of the letters we were wearing."

"That's great, Daniel," Jack said, beginning to wonder if he'd been too optimistic earlier, "But what do they want with us, and are they going to let us go any time soon?"

Daniel start to say something, appeared to think better of it, then said, "She wouldn't tell me. I asked several times. That time she stopped me? I was asking what her people want with us. I think maybe I asked the same question too many times and she got annoyed with me."

"Yes," Jack said slowly, "I know the feeling."


	10. Insight

Daniel knew Jack was irritated. As usual, the colonel's impatience with things he didn't understand was beginning to get the better of him. He was having to rely totally on Daniel and trust his abilities as communication, without even having any insight into what Daniel was doing or whether he was making progress.

By habit, Jack tended to go elsewhere when Daniel was establishing a dialogue with people who didn't speak a language Jack knew. He preferred to feel like he was doing _something_ , like scouting the terrain or something. But he also seemed to get embarrassed by some of Daniel's communication antics. This had at first escaped Daniel's notice, later puzzled him, and eventually he'd come to understand that it was less that Jack was embarrassed _by_ Daniel than _for_ him. He felt that certain things were degrading, hated that they were a necessary part of Daniel's job description, and preferred that neither he nor any other SG team member be around to see. Once Daniel understood the behavior for what it was, it had stopped bothering him. Jack didn't want to see Daniel at work because he was worried about Daniel's dignity. It was ridiculous, but it was one of those little things Jack quietly did to show he cared about all the members of his team, and not just that they came home in one piece. It was one of those things that would actually feel hurtful to anyone who didn't really understand how Jack ticked.

To a degree, Daniel had even come to see that Jack was right to be concerned. People like Jack watched people like Daniel and thought they were funny but absurd. There were members of the SGC who might have less respect for Daniel if they knew he sometimes ran around a room with his arms flapping, making airplane noises to establish a line of communication. And a loss of respect meant a loss of trust. In this business, that could prove deadly. The tendency of military men to ignore Daniel was already high, Jack's efforts were to see that it didn't get any higher.

It was also true to some degree that Daniel found laughter of others at his expense hurtful, and so often found the presence of other people distracting because he was afraid they would laugh at him, or perhaps interrupt by asking questions or making remarks. He worked best one-on-one to start with. You couldn't focus as intently on a group as on an individual, and it was a lot harder to concentrate when there were a bunch of eyes on you, even if their judgment was only silent (which it seldom was). Daniel was used to hecklers, but it still stung, and that slowed down progress. He felt that Jack knew that. For all his protestations of ignorance and stupidity, the colonel was surprisingly insightful and even brilliant at times, especially at what he did best, which was lead a team.

Because he knew Jack, Daniel knew that the colonel's irritation really wasn't for him, but the situation they were in. Elated by his success at finally communicating with these creatures -whether their ancestors were human or howler- Daniel didn't feel much offended by Jack's sarcasm. Jack didn't know what Daniel had actually accomplished, all he knew was that he couldn't do anything, couldn't even pretend he was doing anything, and he hated it. Jack was a man of action, and though he could enforce patience on himself, it ran counter to every aspect of his character.

Besides which, Daniel reminded himself, while he and Sam had been out working yesterday, Jack and Teal'c had been locked up in here, with nothing to do except play six billion rounds of rock-paper-scissors and draw smiley faces in the sand. Fine for Teal'c, patience was in his nature as much as his training, and he could tolerate extended periods of doing nothing when necessary; but torture for Jack, who by now must be burning up with the need to do something, _anything_ to protect his people and try to bring them home safely. Since he could not, all that energy had to go somewhere and just now it was venting itself in Daniel's direction. He managed not to mind for the moment, partially because he understood, but mostly because he knew that they were actually making progress. He'd finally gotten his breakthrough, and he was so close to the answers Jack had been asking for that he could almost imagine he already knew them. Almost.

Riding on restored confidence and the feeling of serenity that always came to him after completing a successful translation (this always arrived before the frenetic excitement of what he'd usually discovered in so doing settled in), Daniel wasn't even entirely listening to Jack.

"Daniel-" Jack started to say, in a tone of voice which suggested he'd noticed Daniel wasn't paying attention and was about to ask if Daniel had even heard anything he'd said.

"Jack," Daniel responded, with what he knew to be annoyingly purposeful sounding innocence.

Jack hated it when his own attitude was turned on him, and for a moment he lost track of whatever words he'd planned to say. Before he could find them again, the monkeys outside started getting wound up. Their sharp cries as they yelled at one another were piercing, and then they settled into that one-note howl that they called as a if they were a single entity, before devolving once again into chaotic roaring and shrieking. Scar was coming. Daniel glanced at Jack, and saw that the colonel had realized it too. For someone who claimed no aptitude when it came to languages, Jack picked up on certain cues awfully quickly.

"Daniel..." Jack said slowly, realization dawning before he quite knew it, "What did you do?"

Instead of answering, Daniel tried to soothe Jack.

"It's okay," he began, "We're making progress."

"Last time you made progress with that monster, he nearly chewed your arm off," Jack reminded him.

Subconsciously Daniel touched his bandaged arm.

Though he couldn't move it well and it hurt a lot when he was paying attention, Daniel had been so absorbed with his translation breakthroughs that he'd all but forgotten the wounds Scar had inflicted. He couldn't see himself, but he suspected that his ear and the side of his head where the howler had slapped him were swollen and red. They certainly felt that way. Lacking glasses, he couldn't see Sam very well at her current distance in this light, but he knew she looked awful from all the bug bites she'd gotten the day before, and he knew he must look at least that bad (probably worse, since his body tended to overreact to mosquito bites). He knew all of that was important to Jack. Each injury acquired by the team while in the captivity of the howlers was a personal strike against the creatures to Jack, and he held their leader most accountable of all.

Daniel understood it, and a part of him was angry that Scar had purposely wasted his time, and that he had attacked Jack and the rest of the team, and that they were prisoners of the howlers because of this one. But he couldn't let that part of him interfere with the explorer he'd always been at heart, not only because the discoveries about history were worth almost any price to him, but also because along that path lay their way home, he was sure of it.

"Try not to piss him off again," Daniel said.

Jack gave him one of those looks that suggested Jack wasn't convinced he and Daniel were the same species, or even from the same planet, but otherwise he said nothing.

Apparently even Sam was feeling ill-at-east, because she said, "I hope you know what you're doing."

Doubt being contagious, Daniel found himself thinking that he also hoped he knew what he was doing.

The gate opened and Scar strolled in, the small reddish howler Daniel had been talking to following a few discreet paces behind and to the left. Unlike before, no other howlers accompanied them. Apparently this time no need was felt to engage in that extra bit of posturing. Either that or Scar didn't want a close up audience to watch this.

They'd all been standing when the gate opened, but as the howlers moved into the enclosure and the gate shut behind them, Daniel sat down, and encouraged the others to do the same by gesture. They did so, but with overt reluctance and seeming wariness as well. Daniel understood why, and some part of him shared their unease in the presence of Scar, but he couldn't let his personal feelings about this particular ape get in his way, he had to set them aside.

The howlers remained standing. Daniel had learned that shifts in their body often changed the nature of what they were saying. His comprehension of their language was limited, but expanding rapidly. It helped that the she-howler had apparently passed on Daniel's message that sometimes saying something slower (the equivalent for the howlers of one word at a time) or repeating it could help Daniel to catch the nuances and understand it better, for Scar vocalized more clearly, moved more slowly, and waited longer for a response than he had before.

 _What you?_ Was the best translation Daniel could do in his head.

He felt like he'd missed about half a sentence, but he couldn't make out the rest. So he wasn't sure if the howler was asking what they were, what they wanted or something even harder to guess. The what might also have been a where, in which case the question might be where they'd come from. In fact, the only thing he was completely sure of was that the question related directly to him somehow. It was a question about Daniel, and presumably be extension the rest of SG-1.

He decided to take it from the top, starting with his name, the fact that he and the team had come through the Stargate, the oft unbelieved fact that they were explorers and hadn't come looking for any trouble. From a wide yawn he got after the she-howler relayed this to the scarred one that Daniel knew was menacing because of the intentional flash of teeth directed his way, he got the impression he'd answered incorrectly. The she-howler gave him a look suggesting she'd expected better of Daniel.

Daniel opted to pretend not to notice the look rather than respond to it.

Scar grunted, seemingly to regain his undivided attention, and then asked another question. Daniel couldn't make that one out, except that it had to do with the device. The she-howler had been very clear on what the device was called.

"We don't know what it does," Daniel said to Scar, also writing some of it for the benefit of the she-howler, who was positioned at an angle to both; the better to look at each, "We came here because we were curious. We're trying to figure out what it does. That's what you want, isn't it?"

The she-howler conveyed whatever her understanding of this was to the scarred one.

This seemed to agitate the scarred howler, who made a series of rapid vocalizations and gestures Daniel had no hope of being able to follow. When he started to shake his head, the scarred howler made as if to clout him, but the she-howler intervened in the same way she had earlier interrupted Daniel's writing. She made a series of soft noises at the male, who bristled angrily at first, but eventually seemed convinced that Daniel was genuinely confused and not just being difficult. Or something. He wondered vaguely if he'd accidentally said something he hadn't meant to by moving his head. Possibly something extremely rude, he supposed, considering how things were going so far.

When the scarred male had finally calmed down again, Daniel decided to see if he could reverse the questioning process. Maybe if he asked the questions, he could get answers.

"What do you want?" Daniel asked.

The female howler relayed this to the male, who responded with the one gesture both SG-1 and the howlers seemed to have completely in common: he pointed at Daniel.

"Me? Why me? What about me?" Daniel asked, trying to think of a good way to phrase it based off the words the she-howler had picked up an understanding of earlier.

Behind him, he sensed Jack stirring uneasily. He didn't like it when a member of his team was singled out, because it usually meant the locals were going to try to make that member stay, or kill them... or something.

Scar began to grunt and gesture again. Daniel started to shake his head, caught himself, but this time Scar seemed to understand the gesture and didn't get upset about it. He stopped, sat, and stared at Daniel for a bit, as if he could make his intentions clear by sheer force of will. Daniel was open to the idea, since that would make things a helluva lot easier, but telepathy did not appear to be on the list of the howler's abilities.

It was more apparent by the second that neither party could understand the other well enough to answer these questions, which were really the only ones that interested them. But Daniel knew that didn't negate all the progress he'd made. They were talking. The more they talked like this, the more of the howler's language Daniel would pick up. He hoped the she-howler would be picking up more of his language as well. Even if she wasn't, the better Daniel learned the language of the howlers now he'd found the key to it, the more SG-1 would understand about their situation. The more they knew, the better off they would be, even if it eventually came to escaping or trying to fight their way out somehow. They'd done crazier things, but it wouldn't be his first choice.

Sighing, turning his head to address Jack, Daniel quietly said, "This could take awhile."

* * *

"I think we're making progress," Daniel said, when the howlers left.

"I disagree," Jack replied.

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, you're still asking the same questions you were two days ago, and you're still not getting anything that looks or sounds like an answer for any of them," Jack pointed out.

"But I'm not getting punched anymore," Daniel pointed out, "That's progress."

"At a speed that would blind Yoda on his deathbed, I'm sure," Jack said sarcastically, "But not all of us are going to reach nine hundred years old, and we certainly won't look as good as Yoda if we do."

Daniel was tired. He'd worked hard all afternoon trying to talk to first the she-howler, then Scar through her, then the she-howler alone again. He'd had to keep careful rein on his frustration because the wrong sort of a look was enough to set the howlers after him again, and he figured he'd gotten bitten enough for one mission. But each holdup and setback made him want to punch something to vent, and he'd been unable to do that.

He tried to take a deep breath to calm himself, but it only made him cough, which only made his headache worse. He'd been able to forget his allergies while the howlers were here, because he focused absolutely on what he was doing. But the longer he stalled out, the more aware he was of his discomfort, and now both howlers were gone again, it was about all his weary brain could focus on.

"Okay, okay," Jack said, backing off, concern in his voice and eyes, "I'm sorry. I know you're doing all you can. I'm not trying to give you a hard time about it."

"Jack, I'm okay," Daniel said quickly, "It's just my allergies."

Of course he wanted to win an argument with Jack. Always, but especially now as he seemed to be on a losing streak everywhere else. But he didn't want Jack to back off out of pity. When they fought, Jack and Daniel fought as equals, never taking unfair advantage over one another. Besides, this time Jack not only had a valid point, he was actually right. Language-wise, Daniel was making progress in leaps and bounds. But insofar as figuring out what the howlers wanted, or convincing them to let SG-1 go, Daniel was at a standstill and seemed to have been from the start.

"Sure, kid," Jack replied, but his voice was too soft to be convincing, "Sure."

Trying to find a spot on his head he could rub that would relieve the pressure with his fingers, Daniel muttered, "If you have any other ideas of how we're gonna get out of this, I'm open to suggestions."

A disheartening silence followed.

Eventually Daniel said, "I was afraid of that."

Before they could settle more deeply into the despair of that thought, there was a sound at the gate. Daniel looked up and around, and was surprised to see the she-howler had come back. He'd been sure she was done for the day. She'd looked tired and uninterested during their last communication. Then he realized she was dragging something with her. It took him a split second to recognize his bag, the bag he often carried in addition to the backpack. The she-howler dragged it close enough for Daniel to reach out and take it, then she dropped it and stepped clear. Daniel took the shoulder strap of the bag and dragged it closer, carefully watching the she-howler, who carefully looked back.

"Thank you," he said, without even looking in the bag.

He knew a friendly gesture when he saw one, even if he didn't know how much help this bag would be because he didn't know what, if anything, was still in it.

The she-howler made an acknowledging gesture, and then walked out, the gate closing behind her.

"What'd she bring ya?" Jack asked curiously.

Opening the bag, Daniel saw that several things had been taken out. But some things had also been put in, and he answered, "One of my notebooks, a pencil, my glasses, and these," he held up the sturdy plastic bottle of antihistamines with its childproof lid.

Jack cocked his head and said with what sounded like disbelief and maybe awe, "You really are making progress with them, aren't you?"

"Apparently so," Daniel murmured thoughtfully.

Daniel had earlier made some references to his antihistamines when a sneezing fit had alarmed the she-howler, and he'd tried to get his glasses back at the start. He figured the notebook was either just a bonus they'd left in the bag, or else the she-howler realized he could draw more efficiently on paper than in the dirt. But the presence of the antihistamines surprised him, because he'd never tried to explain what they were really. Maybe he'd said pills or made some sort of a gesture, but the she-howler's understanding of it indicated she had not only guessed what the gesture meant, she understood the _concept_ of antihistamines. That suggested Daniel was completely off about his guess as to their technological level. Medicines of one kind or another had been around a long time, but antihistamines hadn't really been discovered properly on Earth until something like the 1930s or 40s in Italy, or somewhere like that. Daniel's grasp of ancient history was phenomenal, but recent history gave him fits.

He didn't know how long he'd been thinking when Jack's voice broke him out of it.

"You know," Jack said, "I've heard those work better if you take 'em instead of just lookin' at 'em."

"What?" Daniel blinked, looked at Jack, then back at the pill bottle, "Oh. Right. Yes."

Whatever else it might mean, the return of the antihistamines meant Daniel would find it easier to breathe and think from here on out. Even if they were still helpless, confused prisoners, Daniel was absurdly grateful for that small mercy.

* * *

Daniel hadn't fully realized how awful he was feeling until he started getting relief. Whatever was out there in the jungle was too strong for even Dr. Fraser's miracle antihistamines, but Daniel's life was immeasurably more bearable with than without. He could almost feel his thoughts clearing. His glasses, one lens cracked (wasn't that always the way?), meant he could finally see again. It was nice to be able to see the various blobs around him and not have to guess what they looked like. What bothered him though was that, the more his thoughts cleared, the less sense the howlers made to him. There were too many things that didn't fit together, too many things that seemed contradictory.

"I think I'm starting to like Ginger," Jack remarked after awhile.

"What?" Sam asked.

"Ginger, the little monkey," Jack explained, "She's a redhead."

"Personally, I would've gone with Bovet," Daniel said.

"Why? Is that some fancy word for red in another language?" Jack asked.

Sam laughed and explained before Daniel could, "No. It's the name of the person credited with discovering antihistamines."

Jack looked at Sam for a long second, as if trying to gauge whether she was joking or not. Then he looked at Daniel, who wore a similar expression to Sam's. He seemed to decide they were serious.

"Oh," was all he said.

"Ginger Bovet," Sam said thoughtfully, "Has a nice ring to it."

"It's not as if we can pronounce whatever her real name is anyway," Daniel pointed out, "She already has a name for me. I heard her use it when she was talking to Scar."

"Oh really? What's it translate to?" Jack asked with raised eyebrows.

"Pale Eyes. I think," Daniel answered reluctantly, "Or possibly Blind Eyes."

Jack smirked, but managed not to laugh outright.

"It actually makes sense," Daniel said, "All the howlers have dark eyes, brown ones, I think. And I'm sure their eyesight is better than mine."

"That's because you couldn't tell a salmon from an assault rifle without your glasses," Jack pointed out.

"My vision isn't _that_ bad," Daniel protested, largely because it was true and Jack knew it.

Granted, he did need his glasses to see things, but he was hardly Velma Dinkley without them. Daniel's glasses had a tendency to get broken or taken away from him, and he continued to function reasonably well without them. Of course, he had practice. Even though he'd had poor vision his entire life, he'd spent a lot of his youth without glasses. It was a deficiency he'd learned to get around. But it had definitely contributed to his fondness for engravings, so he could feel any letters he was unsure of. Though of course he wasn't blind enough to need it, Braille was among the languages in which he was proficient. Technically it was considered a writing system and not a language, but in Daniel's head it was a language just as much as ASL was (another language he knew, if only passably well).

"Yeah, I know," Jack admitted, then shook his head, "You're something else, you know that?"

"I am?" Daniel asked, not sure what Jack was referring to, but sensing conversation whiplash was imminent.

"What were you thinking, throwing yourself into the teeth of that monkey?" Jack asked.

It took Daniel a moment to remember all the way back to when the scarred-howler had gone after Jack, and Daniel had put himself in the way. That seemed a long time ago now, and it hardly mattered now.

"He could've killed you, gone right through you to get to me," Jack went on when Daniel was silent.

"I know," Daniel said.

"You couldn't have known how it would turn out," Jack persisted.

"It wasn't the first time," Daniel reminded him.

"Yeah, and the first time got you killed," Jack responded, "You should've learned something from that."

"We killed Ra," Daniel pointed out, "Using his own arrogance and cowardice against him."

"That isn't the point," Jack snapped, suddenly angry for no reason Daniel could discern.

"Then what is?" Daniel asked, genuinely baffled.

"When are you going to realize your life matters too?" Jack said, then looked shocked by his own inquiry, like he hadn't even realized that was what he was thinking.

Daniel stared at him, and all the words in all the languages he knew were not enough for him to figure out how to answer that question. Jack understood. He always did. So he didn't ask anymore. He just stared at Daniel for a long time, and then a kind of pain came into his eyes and he changed the subject.


	11. Time to Go

Jack knew from the moment he asked that the question was unfair. Daniel had once told him that he didn't want to die. Even with the death of Sha're, Daniel had too much life in him to really ever be suicidal. However much pain and grief he endured, Daniel always had this internal light that was too brilliant to ever be put out by sorrow. Daniel loved life, and he was scared to die. It wasn't fair to act like that wasn't true. But Jack couldn't help it.

It wasn't even all that strange. In the Air Force, Jack had known his fair share of guys who didn't want to die. He even knew one guy who was scared of flying, but was a first-rate pilot anyway and so, in the name of his country, he'd flown whether he liked it or not. That guy, certain every time he got on a plane that this time it would kill him, had done his service, been retired and gone off to fly commercial airliners or something. Another kid, convinced of his own immortality, had died at the start of his first mission in the field; he either hadn't checked his plane before takeoff or somehow screwed up, because it was eventually determined that he'd died because of a malfunction with the plane.

Daniel wasn't a soldier in the sense that he could get a field promotion, but Jack considered him to be the real thing, with or without a rank, because he served in the field. He followed orders (the genuine kind, the kind that really mattered in the heat of a moment), shot the bad guys, and dared fate to take him on. With weapons, words or whatever he had, Daniel fought to protect his world. In an office or in the field, he was a dedicated guardian of Earth, and he'd give his life for what he believed in, with the full knowledge that death could come any second of any minute in any hour, and he might have as little as a split second to act. Just like Jack, Daniel knew each beat of his heart could be his last, especially in this line of work. He was willing to take on that risk, shoulder that responsibility, offer his blood to the cause. To Jack, that made him as real a soldier as if he'd gone through boot camp and been given a rank.

Of course, some people would get mad at that. Soldier was for the army according to some. In the Air Force, it was Airman; but that was a rank as well, so that was just confusing. Besides, it wasn't fair to call Teal'c an Airman -despite his piloting skills- and it wasn't accurate either. And it certainly couldn't apply to Daniel. Jack didn't hold with the argument that soldiers were only for the army; you needed a generic term for military guys that included them all. When asked about it, Daniel had given a lengthy monologue on the origin of the term soldier. Jack hadn't really been listening, but he'd heard something about Latin root words and having pay, and it sounded like Daniel was basically saying soldier was about as generic a term as you could get, and its root word didn't even have anything to do with serving in the military. Jack wondered if Daniel would object to being called a soldier.

He'd decided long ago that he wasn't going to ask.

In any case, Jack didn't know where his questioning of Daniel had come from. As Daniel had pointed out, this wasn't the first time. It was unlikely to be the last. And Jack had offered up his own life a time or two; more than that if you counted his years of service in the Air Force prior to joining the Stargate Program. It wasn't hard for him to understand. But he'd asked anyway. The thing that really threw him was the silence that had followed the question.

Instead of saying he did realize his life had value, or "how dare you ask me that?" or something, Daniel had just stayed silent, just sort of stared at Jack like he didn't even understand the question. Maybe he didn't. Jack certainly couldn't say that _he_ understood it, and he was the one who'd asked. Maybe Daniel couldn't answer because he knew Jack knew all this, understood it all, and was stunned that he could even ask such a ridiculous question. But there was a possibility that wasn't the reason for Daniel's silence, and Jack found that almost more worrying than the question itself.

Daniel didn't talk much after Jack's outburst, but it was a loud kind of silence, the kind you could hear better than a shout. Jack knew without having to see that, despite the hard work he'd put in that day, Daniel wouldn't be going to sleep any time soon. Jack was the first to bed down for the night, but he probably wasn't fooling anyone. A couple of hours after things got quiet, he sat up and looked around until he managed to make out Daniel's form in the shadows. He got up and went over.

"I don't want to die, you know," Daniel said in a low voice, "I never have. Well... except maybe while I was going through withdrawal after that thing with the sarcophagus."

"I know, Danny," Jack said, sitting down beside him.

"Not even when Sha're died," Daniel persisted, "Even then, knowing life would be hell without her... some piece of me wanted to die maybe... but I knew even then that I'd keep going somehow."

"I know," Jack repeated, thinking about the way he'd handled it when his own world had come crashing down, how he would've been dead if not for Daniel; not only because of the dangers they'd faced, but because it had been his personal mission to die back then.

They'd been over this before, of course. With luck, they'd go over it again. That's how it was in real life, some subjects you just sort of revisited every so often, almost as if to make sure they were still there, that nothing had changed. Jack guessed maybe it was a part of human nature, a pathetic way of trying to keep tabs on reality to make sure it wasn't doing something sneaky while you weren't looking, a subconscious testing to be sure the people you thought you knew were the same ones you'd thought you'd known the day before, and the day before that. Of course, given what SG-1 did for a living, Jack supposed it was only natural that they would do it more often than regular people, because they knew firsthand how sneaky reality could be, and how easy it was for the people they knew to be replaced when they weren't looking.

"Daniel," Jack said, "Sometimes when I open my mouth, a whole lotta stupid comes out."

"I know," Daniel replied, a soft smile in his voice if not in his eyes.

"You know I didn't mean-" Jack began, but Daniel interrupted.

"I know."

"Good," Jack nodded, and then found himself at a loss for what to say, so instead of saying anything he just shut up, and the two of them listened to the alien night for awhile.

Finally, Daniel broke the silence, his voice shaky with unaccustomed hesitation when he said, "I don't know why I'm still afraid of him."

"Who?" Jack asked, almost as startled by the words themselves as their content, "Scarface the Ape Lord? You'd have to be crazy not to be scared of him."

"No, not him," Daniel said, and made as if to clarify, but then instead just closed his mouth without saying anything further.

"Chai Tea?" Jack asked, reflexively getting the name wrong on purpose even as surprise washed through him.

"Chianti," Daniel corrected, just as reflexively, "And yes. Him."

Jack both did and did not want to hear the details. He knew it would be bad, but he also was dying to know what the hell this James Chianti could possibly have done that would instill such fear in Daniel where no one and nothing out here had been able to. Not Apophis, not Ra, not anybody had managed to paralyze Daniel with fear like the sound of some human guy's voice on the line.

"Daniel, you're on an alien planet, possibly about to be eaten by monkeys, probably getting some sort of dietary deficiency from eating nothing but fruit, and you're worried about some old civilian guy back on Earth who knows your phone number?" Jack asked incredulously.

"I know," Daniel nodded unhappily, "But it's just how I feel."

"Daniel, for cryin' out loud!" Jack managed to exclaim quietly but emphatically, "You're not a kid anymore. You have military-grade weapons training and experience in the field. Even if this guy is dumb enough to show up in your apartment, you have the right -and the ability- to defend your life and property. He can't do _anything_ to you. Not anymore."

For perhaps the first time ever, Daniel was quiet in the face of Jack's anger.

Finally, very quietly, he asked, "Then why am I still so afraid?"

Jack felt his heart break a little inside, not just because of the deep personal fear Daniel was expressing, but also the almost childlike innocence in the question he'd asked, as if he actually thought Jack had an answer. Daniel had to know that he didn't. As leader of SG-1, he was supposed to have all the answers, but Daniel knew full well that was a frank impossibility. In fact, a lot of the time it was actually Daniel or Carter or Teal'c who had most of the answers. Yet there was still voiced a gentle trust, a faith that Jack had the ability to answer all questions, and to make all wrongs right.

In their first year as a team, Daniel had gone missing and been thought dead. In clearing out his apartment, Carter had found the collection of journals Daniel had made, one for each planet, each mission, surprisingly organized and detailed for someone who always seemed to forget time and space when he was in the middle of solving a problem or making a discovery.

Jack remembered with perfect clarity the line Carter had read aloud that day.

" _Sha're is gone, Jack says we'll find her. If anyone can, he can."_

That one line had been enough to reveal to Jack how deeply Daniel had trusted him even then. He felt guilty at having heard that private thought, but even more so whenever he couldn't find a solution, when he didn't have an answer, when he couldn't fix what was broken. Each time he felt like it was a betrayal of that trust Daniel had placed in him, yet each time Daniel either didn't seem to notice the failing, or forgave it at once. Even though in the end they had found Sha're too late, to Daniel it seemed most important that they had found her at all. So Jack knew he had to answer the question, even though the only answer he had was really no kind of answer at all.

"I don't know, Danny," he whispered, "I just don't know."

* * *

Aside from the brief conversation with Daniel, the night passed quietly for Jack. He did eventually manage to go to sleep. When he woke up, the morning had dawned gray and foggy, and he couldn't be sure about the time of day just by looking at the overcast sky.

It was cooler than the previous days, but not frigid. Mostly it was just extremely damp. Daniel was up and fretting over his notebook, trying to find a way to keep the moisture from seeping into the pages and ruining whatever notes he'd made. Carter and Teal'c were also up, looking at a loss for what to do.

Jack knew Teal'c must be feeling pretty useless by now. Jack felt that way too. At least Carter was able -with her technobabble- to do _something_. All Jack and Teal'c could do was wait. Jack had tried talking to the monkeys, but they had either ignored him or thrown things like pebbles and twigs at him and scolded in loud voices. Not only was Jack feeling useless, he was feeling cramped and confined, bored and not a little bit stir-crazy. He supposed that was the real reason he'd been picking on Daniel yesterday, not that it was any excuse. Danny was doing the best he could, Jack knew.

Glancing at Daniel, Jack saw he looked more his usual geeky-nerd self, with hair wild, glasses slightly askew, bent over a notebook as if it contained the secrets of the universe, and he realized that Daniel had actually accomplished a lot yesterday, even if it hadn't been what Jack had been hoping for. Jack also noted that the antihistamines were doing him some good, even though Daniel always said it was best to take them before you needed them. It was funny, Jack hadn't even really noticed how flushed Daniel's face had been looking until it stopped being that way, and had only subconsciously noticed how frequently Daniel stopped whatever he was doing to cough or clear his throat or sneeze.

Looking up, Jack saw the monkeys that were usually hanging out up there were not immediately in evidence. At first he wasn't sure where they'd gone, then he spotted one near the trunk of a tree, looking miserable and trying to keep out of the worst of the wet. There were fewer monkeys overhead than usual, and the few there were seemed to be trying to hide from the fog. Jack supposed he'd probably hide from fog too if he was all covered in hair, especially since they probably had the type that went all fuzzy in humid conditions. Jack's hair tended to go flat when it got wet, but Daniel and Carter's hair tended to get all kinked up and in their faces unless they were thoroughly and completely soaked.

After years of listening to Jack extol the virtues of short hair, Daniel had finally started keeping his shorter. Though Jack wasn't sure if it was in response to the advice, or because a few years in the field had taught Daniel that hair in the face was always a bad thing. Or maybe he was just becoming more self-aware, and realized the slightly disheveled look didn't do well for him when it came to first impression with natives.

Carter's hair was always changing, but ever stylish and feminine, without sacrificing utility. Even so, it was long enough that humidity made it go unruly, in what Jack privately though of as the cutest way possible. He was pretty sure Carter would kill him if he told her he thought it was cute when her hair refused to cooperate with her. It was the sort of thing that would annoy her, especially coming from him. They'd long ago agreed to stay professional, and such a comment would be a technical breach of that agreement. She'd _have_ to be angry with him, there would be no other choice for her.

Sometimes Jack envied Daniel his lack of attraction to Carter, and her equal lack of attraction to him. Jack sensed that, even had he not been married to Sha're, Daniel would never have anything but team camaraderie and almost sibling-like affection for Carter. Carter clearly felt the same for him. Besides, Daniel lacked a military rank. It gave the two of them the ability to be completely free in their interactions. Daniel could say just about anything to Carter, without having to think about whether it was appropriate, and she could respond in kind.

Teal'c, of course, always seemed to carefully weigh and measure each word he intended to say before he spoke, regardless of who he talked to. He often seemed puzzled by the rapid-fire way the rest of the team bantered back and forth, as if saying the first thing that came into his head was so alien to him that he could not fathom how they were able to talk so quickly. As he sometimes envied Daniel's freedom in saying whatever he thought to pretty much anyone, Jack also wished he had a modicum of Teal'c's self control. That ability to hold his tongue regardless of how badly he wanted to say something, or to say it all with little more than a tilted head or raised eyebrow.

Seeing Jack was sitting up, Carter came and crouched next to where he was.

"There aren't many guards out there today," she said in a low voice, "I don't think they like the wet. They seem to like Daniel, so he's keeping an eye on them."

Jack glanced at Daniel anew. He noted that Daniel was very close to the gate, a lot closer than the monkeys had ever tolerated Jack's being. Close enough to see through the openings in the thorn enclosure for sure. It explained why his notebook was getting so soggy; he had less than half his mind on it, and wasn't really paying much attention to what he was doing, only to what he _looked_ like he was doing. He was doing a fine job of it, good enough that even Jack had been fooled for a minute.

"Sir," Carter added when Jack remained silent, "Teal'c and I agree that this may be our best chance."

"Chance?" Jack inquired, purposely playing dumb.

Carter indulged him, "At escape, sir."

Jack leaned his head back, and started to pretend to think it over. In fact he'd already thought it over. And over. And over again. He'd had nothing to do in here but worry about Carter and Daniel and think about escape. They knew the route they'd taken from Alien Stonehenge, and knew how to get back to the Stargate from there. Even if they hadn't, Teal'c for sure knew. Jack also knew that the gate of the enclosure was pretty flimsy, if only the monkeys would let them work on it for awhile. In fact, with a pair of knives (which they had), they could eventually cut through the wall and slip out that way. The problem was their overseers, who would observe that kind of activity.

But maybe not with fewer monkeys clinging to tree trunks, trying to avoid the wet. Maybe with that advantage, they could make a hole and get out. But for how long? Would the monkeys chase them en masse? Even a single howler would be strong enough to take down any one of them except possibly Teal'c. And the howlers were fast in the trees, Jack remembered. Daniel had finally begun to make some inroads to understanding, and perhaps building trust. An escape attempt was likely to burn that bridge for good. Fine, if they escaped, but what if they didn't make it? Then what?

"And what does Daniel say?" Jack found himself asking.

Carter and Teal'c thought this was their best chance. Their opinions, individually and collectively, carried a lot of weight with Jack. But if Daniel was going to throw a temper tantrum about it...

"He doesn't," Carter replied, then amended, "I mean he hasn't said anything."

With Daniel, you could never tell what silence from him meant. Sometimes it meant he was looking for the right time to pitch his argument. Sometimes it was wordless consent. If there was a time to pitch the argument, it was now, so Jack decided to wave Daniel over and have it out with him if that's what was needed. Carter politely went to the other side of the enclosure, where she could pretend not to be able to hear them. Teal'c was there already, in obvious anticipation of the possible confrontation. Selective deafness was a useful (though sometimes annoying) trait that all members of SG-1 possessed.

"Jack," Daniel said when he came over.

"Daniel," Jack replied, as Daniel sat down and carelessly laid his notebook aside.

Jack took a long, appraising look at Daniel. It was harder to tell with the glasses, especially with their cracked lens, but he looked guarded, wary. That wasn't usually a good sign. Clearly he was well aware of what Jack had brought him over here to talk about, but wasn't going to say it himself.

"You gonna argue about this?" Jack asked.

"No," Daniel replied with surprising quickness.

That in itself was worrying to Jack. The last time he'd been so swiftly agreeable, with this same look in his eyes, had been when he had first accepted that they would have to kill. That they might even have to kill Skaara in order to protect Earth. It had been necessary, but Jack had always felt the world had done Daniel a grave injustice by taking some of his innocence and idealism that day. The Earth was better off, and the team was better for it... but what about Daniel? Jack knew the answer to that.

"But you don't think it's the right decision, do you?" Jack pressed.

"Jack, I've known for a long time we'd probably have to fight our way out eventually," Daniel replied, the words sort of tumbling over each other in his rush to get them all said without interruption, "The howlers are too unpredictable, too violent. Sooner or later, one of us is going to be seriously hurt, maybe even killed. We can't keep on like we have been. I know that."

"But," Jack insisted.

"But," Daniel conceded, "I don't like our chances. I think these howlers are going to tear us apart."

Jack nodded thoughtfully, "Well, we've been in worse situations."

"Yeah," Daniel agreed, "But our luck is bound to run out someday."

"Yeah well..." Jack fumbled for something to say, and concluded lamely, "Maybe not today."

"Maybe not," Daniel said, but he sounded doubtful.

* * *

Rather than go for the gate, even though the ties that held it shut would be the easiest to cut, SG-1 opted for the more discreet option, cutting a hole in what could be considered the back of the enclosure, not directly across from the gate, but slightly off to the right. The idea was that they wouldn't be in the direction a howler coming through the gate would be looking, so they might have an extra split second to start "acting casual" if their party did get crashed.

Daniel and Carter acted as lookouts, and also as distractions if necessary. The howlers had so far been most interested in Daniel, but Carter secondarily, so if he alone wasn't enough, maybe she would be. In any case, there were only two knives, and Jack didn't anticipate their having to switch off. Of course, ideally the howlers wouldn't come visiting today. But Jack never planned for ideal, he only hoped for it.

After he and Teal'c had been at it for about an hour, he heard a low rumble, instantly recognizable as thunder. The sound disturbed the howlers, who chattered at the sky nervously. In their fear of the storm, they appeared to have forgotten SG-1 entirely. The first rumble was almost immediately followed by another, louder rumble, and Jack found himself thinking about the fact that he'd really prefer not to go running through the jungle in the midst of rain and fog.

Even aside from the howlers and whatever else might be out there, it was easy to get lost in fog, to slip on wet leaves and mud, to become disoriented by the bright flashes of lightning that usually accompanied such weather. Jack felt worry pricking at him as he thought about the four of them trying to make the miles home in the middle of a storm, the potential ferocity of which he was currently in no position to measure. Perhaps the howlers were justified in lowering their guard. Only fools would do what Jack was about to ask his team to do.

He didn't entirely realize he'd stopped working with his knife until he noticed Teal'c looking at him.

"O'Neill?" his deep voice spoke the name as a sentence, and Jack heard all he didn't say.

"Am I crazy or is this a bad idea?" Jack asked quietly.

Teal'c was silent for a lengthy moment, and then said, "Would it not be more foolish to remain captives to creatures which are provably hostile and of unclear origin or intent?"

There was no need for Teal'c to glance significantly at Jack's bitten hand, or Daniel's lacerated and bandaged arm, Jack did that himself as Teal'c spoke. The reality was that they both needed medical attention. Aside from the broken bones Jack was in possession of, both he and Daniel were at severe risk of infection because of the environment and lack of proper first aid supplies. Even the minor wounds inflicted by the thorns were dangerous in the dirty, humid jungle environment. Any open wound was a bad thing, but especially under these conditions.

"But Daniel's been making progress," Jack said slowly, doubtfully.

"Daniel Jackson would be the first to admit that that progress has been slow and of unpredictable result," Teal'c pointed out, and Jack had to admit he was right.

How long did they wait, how many times did they risk injury before they said enough? How much time was too much to take? Daniel had already made his opinion clear, though it was equally evident he was thoroughly unhappy about the side he'd landed on. A linguist, a historian, an explorer, Daniel resented that the right answer in this case was to flee with questions unanswered, mysteries unsolved.

That Daniel of all people had admitted this was their best chance said something. No one knew better than Daniel what their chances of communicating with the howlers were. No one knew more intimately the feel of the howler's savage bite. Daniel had spent the most time with them, and so knew them best. His first choice was always to seek to learn, to know, to discover, to connect with other cultures. That he abandoned that choice said he didn't see it as a feasible option. An idealist fueled by a realistic but chronic optimism, it took a lot for Daniel to see something as hopelessly bad or dangerous.

It was time to go.


	12. Flight

Quietly, one after another, the team slipped through the hole Jack and Teal'c had made. They'd done it carefully so the thorns could be pushed back into place once they were through. As the sky got steadily darker, the thunder louder and the lightning more intense, the howlers paid less and less attention to their captives, and showed no signs of noticing that they were no longer in the enclosure. Hopefully by the time they figured it out, SG-1 would be long gone. Daniel couldn't be sure they'd think like humans, assuming the team had somehow gone through the gate if they didn't see a hole in the fence. He didn't think apes were noted for their sense of smell, but these weren't really monkeys, were they? Hopefully the wet would cover their tracks. That always threw dogs on television, but Daniel honestly didn't know if it really worked. Aside from common sense and general knowledge, experience had taught Daniel that a lot of what was in movies and television wasn't real. If TV couldn't get the correct way to hold an M9 on the screen, what were the chances it was accurate about how scent was covered up?

Maybe they'd get lucky. Maybe it wouldn't matter.

With his unerring sense of direction, Teal'c took the lead through the jungle. Though Daniel guessed Teal'c could've taken them straight to the Stargate, the Jaffa headed in the direction of the stones they'd first come to investigate. A moment's thought and Daniel figured out the reason for this. Most of them knew the terrain between here and there somewhat, and all of them knew it between there and the Stargate. It would be foolish to try and make their escape over unfamiliar ground if they didn't have to.

Once under the canopy of the trees, it was hard to tell if it was still only fog or if there was also rain. Water ran in rivulets down the trunks of the trees, and dripped from higher tree leaves to lower ones, and sometimes came down with a heavy splash when it had collected in the fold of a leaf until the leaf couldn't take the weight anymore. Thunder rolled almost continuously now, and it felt like they were walking through thick clouds that were just sitting on the ground. The thickness of the fog not only prevented them from seeing far ahead, it blocked daylight even more than the clouds above or the jungle itself, until it was very nearly black beneath the trees, and almost impossible to see much of anything more than a few feet away.

All four of them kept an eye on the trees, and an ear out for the distinctive howling that would tell them their escape had been discovered and it was time to run. They would not run until they had to. Between treacherous terrain and general human limitations, they needed to save that for when they really needed it. Even though it seemed like a good idea to move faster, it was actually safer to move quietly. As long as the howlers didn't know where they were and that they were heading for home, they had the advantage.

So they moved as quickly as they could without making noise. Not surprisingly, Daniel rapidly fell behind. He could've kept up, but not while making sure to be quiet. But he wasn't far behind, Jack made sure of it, slowing up to ensure they didn't lose sight of him. So long as Daniel was reasonably close, Jack wasn't worried. He had no reason to be.

The colonel himself had taught Daniel not only to shoot, but also how to fight. Daniel would never be as good at it as the rest of the team, but he had far outdistanced all the other "geeks" working for the SGC in physical prowess, and these days he could even hold his own in sparring matches against some of the airmen (the Marines still had him beat though; and of course nobody was a match for Teal'c). To his mind, it was a matter of necessity, he had to be able to support the team under all conditions, not become a liability. Daniel didn't need protecting any more than the rest of SG-1. Not anymore.

But he still was at the back of the line as they went, and he knew that he was slowing them down some. Over open ground, Daniel had become a pretty good runner, but the rough terrain and limited visibility were doing him in, especially coupled with the reduced but still persistent allergies. He also kept forgetting about his injured arm and putting it out to help him balance against tree trunks and the like over the rougher parts, and that never ended well. Jack's left hand had been bitten, so it was easier for him to remember not to use it. But with Daniel, it had been his right arm. It was natural for him to every time try to steady himself with his dominant hand, and of course it got him into trouble every time because it hurt and that slowed him down.

It was potentially this that saved his life as he spotted through the fog and shadows a pair of eyes, glowing like smoldering embers out of the dark. At once he stopped and stared back. It was the reflex of the hunted, both man and beast, to stare back when they were spotted by a predator. A few seconds later Daniel's brain caught up with his instinct, and he realized what he was looking at.

Whatever was in the shadows, it was the thing the howlers had been so worried about. The storm was providing cover for it in the same way that the night did, only better because the thunder and rain covered the sound of its movements. It was not only invisible, it was also inaudible. The howlers weren't hiding from the storm, they were hiding from this, whatever _this_ was. Daniel couldn't really see it, and could only faintly judge its size by how high above the ground its eyes were, and he was sure it was in a hunter's crouch so it made any estimate pretty hazy. He wasn't sure if he was really able to dimly make out a slight outline of a broad, flat head or if that was his imagination.

The predator was targeting him because of his slowness, and his evident clumsiness. Daniel was sure anything able to hunt the howlers could rip him apart without difficulty, but the point was that the predator wasn't sure. It didn't know if humans were prey or -if they were- how dangerous they might be. Without weapons, Daniel knew his only hope was to try to intimidate it. The stare down was a start. Sometimes when a prey animal stared at a predator, the predator would give up. That is, if the prey didn't flinch. It was that flinch that killed most of the time. The sign of weakness was the predator's cue to move in.

"Jack..." he spoke the name low, soft, avoiding anything that might be mistaken for an alarm call.

Daniel knew he could fool people into thinking he was confident when inside he was shaking in his boots, but he wasn't sure he could fool the predator, which had moved its head a little as he was staring at it, seemingly to see if he would flinch. Its vertical pupils seemed to bore right into him, and he felt the desire to flee, even though he knew it would be useless.

Wordlessly, Jack had turned back at the sound of Daniel's voice. Daniel didn't hear him coming back, but knew Jack would be joining him. The predator's head bobbed a little, suggesting it was less sure of itself than before, indicating that Daniel no longer stood alone.

"Teal'c, come over here and look menacing," Jack said, using his command voice; a crisp and clear tone that brooked no argument from anyone... or anything.

Daniel felt relief flood through him. Jack understood exactly what Daniel did, and he knew what they needed to do. Intimidation came naturally to their Jaffa comrade. His silences spoke volumes to people, they sensed how dangerous he was when provoked without having to see it, even the ones who had no combat experience. Human instinct wasn't buried as deeply as most people thought. And, fortunately for them, the predator's instinct was even closer to the surface. When Teal'c moved forward in that way he had that suggested he was going to kill anything that stood in his way, the predator bolted. The eyes flashed out of view and they could hear it crashing through the brush. Teal'c tracked its progress by turning his head to follow it as it raced away noisily, the hunt forgotten. Maybe Teal'c could've stood up against it, and maybe not, but what mattered was that he had given the predator the _impression_ that he could kill it, and would if it held its ground. When the predator flinched first, the predator had to run. Lions ran in the face of angry buffalo all the time, even though they also ate the immense bovines not infrequently.

Daniel let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"Maybe we should keep closer together," Sam suggested, speaking aloud the instinct of all group animals, the rule of safety in numbers, which didn't only mean that the predator might select someone besides you, but if you all stood together you would be seen as a single, much larger, target and the predator might not get any of you.

"Yeah," Jack agreed, "Maybe so."

Now the danger was passed, fear tried to take over. Daniel's body had flooded itself with the chemicals and signals needed to ensure a swift flight or a strong fight in defense of his life. Neither of those being necessary, he started to shake with the unreleased energy that had nowhere to spend itself.

"Easy, Danny," Jack said, putting a hand on his shoulder, "Take it easy."

Daniel took a few shaky breaths, managed to get hold of himself, "I'm okay."

Jack looked at him for a moment, as if trying to see if Daniel was lying.

Then he said, "Okay. Then let's keep moving."

"No argument here," Daniel said, keenly aware of how weak his voice sounded.

* * *

Daniel couldn't be sure, but it seemed likely that the fleeing predator had gotten the attention of the howlers in the trees it passed below. Whether it was that or something else which roused them, mere minutes after the stand-off with the predator, the forest came alive with the sound of howlers roaring.

The inhuman sound was less like the announcement of a prisoner escape and more like the rallying cry of a pack before the hunt. It felt like the time had come to run, but Daniel knew it hadn't. Not yet. Though the roars were deafening and echoed through the forest, seeming to come from everywhere, Daniel had been close enough to the howlers for long enough listening to their howling-roaring declarations of territory in the morning and evening to know they weren't. The roaring carried on the wind, but it seemed also to reverberate in the trees themselves, as if it had been designed to be felt in the vibration of branches miles away rather than truly heard at so great a distance.

Jack had paused to look back, listening to the sound. After exchanging a look with Daniel, then with Sam, perhaps to reassure himself they heard the same thing he did, Jack went on, following Teal'c at the same pace as before. Sam and Daniel followed his lead, while Teal'c showed no indication that the howling had made an impression on him (even though Daniel knew it must have).

From that point on, they didn't exchange anymore words. All communication was looks and gestures. Hand signals were one thing Daniel didn't have any trouble with when he joined the SGC. Though he lacked formal training on military gestures, he'd seen most of them before, and they were pretty intuitive. It was just another language, albeit a limited and simple -if a very precise- one. It was such a universally easy to understand language that even the Jaffa warriors used very similar gestures, such that Teal'c had easily adapted to the Earth variations, and Jack had understood his gesturing even before then. It was more like they'd been speaking the same language with a different accent than anything. The team needed that clarity now. When Teal'c stopped, sending the signal for the rest of them to stay low, they each echoed the gesture for the one behind, even though they could all see Teal'c. It was habit and training, not thought that dictated the action. Daniel knew its value well. He'd lost count of the times he'd missed the first signal (especially in his first year in the field), but because someone else was repeating it, he'd managed to avoid getting into trouble.

Hearing the howlers roaring behind them, Daniel wasn't sure what Teal'c was listening to. Then he realized Teal'c wasn't listening, he was looking, but trying to avoid appearing to do so. Without moving his head, Daniel looked up and around at the trees. There were howlers above, moving silently from branch to branch, headed for the stones. They didn't appear to have spotted SG-1. _Yet_.

After the silent hunting party had slipped past, Jack made a gesture to the team, an order they followed with neither hesitation nor question. Forget the stones, they were going to make a beeline for the Stargate, and hope to God they didn't run into anything that prevented them from reaching it before the howlers did. Hopefully the howlers were assuming they were going for the stones, and that would slow their advance towards the Stargate. But Daniel knew that was an awfully big ask, considering the sheer number of monkeys in the tribe.

He wished he'd been able to figure out what the howlers really wanted from him. Their determination to recapture SG-1 seemed to override their fear of the predator and darkness of the storm. That indicated a certain level of desperation. It annoyed him that SG-1 had to leave without solving the mystery. But being locked up in the thorn enclosure and periodically getting beat up by monkeys had lost its appeal on the first day, and he was definitely getting tired of eating fruit as well.

The way home was littered with obstacles. Slippery, muddy inclines and rain-slick boulders, thorny plants and tangled vines, sudden small drops, sharply jutting rocks, all rendered impossible to see until you were in them on account of the jungle-made shadows, the rain and the persistent fog. Within five minutes of leaving the semi-familiar way to the stones, the team was muddied and bloodied, each of them having slipped and fallen against muddy embankments and rough bark or rock or sharp thorns. Technically Teal'c had done so while attempting to help his comparatively clumsy team mates, but the fact remained that he was as dinged and dirty as the rest of them. And of course they'd all been soaked before the escape started thanks to the soup-thick fog.

Daniel knew their progress was slowing to a crawl, as they tried to hurriedly and without noise pick their way through the unknown jungle that suddenly seemed a million times denser now they were in it and not merely looking at it. Daniel was all the more aware of it because he'd pocketed his glasses. They were too fogged up to do him any good now, and losing them wouldn't help him any either. Besides, the rest of the team was practically having to feel their way as well. Daniel, being somewhat used to it, was actually doing a bit better than Jack or Sam now. Even though they were more athletic than he was and had earlier been traveling faster, they weren't used to climbing around with everything blurry or invisible. Even at night without night vision equipment, the moon and stars made it possible to see with surprising clarity. But the fog and shadows made everything indistinct, and guessing distance was impossible. Only Teal'c seemed unaffected, and Daniel knew that was only because they were doing so poorly that he still looked good by comparison. But even Teal'c was being hampered by the conditions. Besides which, the days of inactivity and inadequate food had to be taking their toll on him, even if he wasn't showing it. Daniel knew the Jaffa had a way of doing whatever it took to finish a mission without faltering once, and then collapsing afterward. So just because he looked fine now, it didn't mean he was. Though he was still probably doing better than the rest of them.

Scrambling up a rocky slope and then stopping to catch his breath, Daniel listened to the roars of the howlers. Deep, low vibrations shook the air, and were definitely getting closer, though not with a lot of speed. Daniel guessed the roaring howlers were pausing at every branch to give voice. He wondered how many silent scouts were running ahead of them. It was a fine system of intimidation and distraction, but Daniel didn't feel particularly appreciative of it right now.

Looking back, he saw that Sam had managed to free herself from the mud she'd briefly gotten bogged down in with Teal'c's help. Jack had slipped a bit on the rock he was scaling on account of his injured hand, but he ignored the offer of assistance Daniel made. It was probably just as well, Daniel needed the recovery time. Once everyone was up, Teal'c took over point again, picking the easiest route he could find while the others trailed in his wake, trying not to lose sight of him only a few feet ahead.

And then, suddenly it seemed, the jungle broke apart to reveal thigh-high grass. The clearing in which the Stargate was set. All that stood between them and it was a few hundred yards of open ground. Except they couldn't see the rocks under the grass, but remembered well it wasn't as flat and smooth as it looked. And in fact the rain coming down in sheets made it so they couldn't even see the Stargate from where they were. The fog surrounding them, the rain falling, the heavy clouds blacking out the sky, all made it seem as if they were about to step into an endless void rather than an open field.

Howls erupted directly overhead and Daniel flinched involuntarily. The scouts had found them, and were announcing their location. _Now_ it was time to run. After all the climbing and scrambling in the jungle, Daniel wasn't sure how much running he had in him. He also knew it was a coin toss whether the scouts would pursue them, or simply continue sounding off. One way or the other, this escape was going to be over in just a matter of seconds. Seconds that would, Daniel knew from experience, feel like an eternity.

"Carter, go for the DHD. Daniel, you stay with her. Teal'c and I will provide as much cover as we can," Jack said, but of course they all knew there wasn't really any cover to be had.

Sam would be dialing the first address she could think of where there was a scheduled mission, or something like that. Daniel would be acting as her final line of defense, or possibly her support if she had trouble remembering one of the symbols. They were the best with 'gate addresses, whereas Teal'c and Jack were undeniably the strongest fighters of the team. It just made sense to arrange them that way.

"Go," Jack instructed, and Sam and Daniel bolted side by side for where they guessed the DHD had to be out there in the fog; Jack and Teal'c fell in behind them, intentionally staying a few paces back.

Partway there, Sam hit some kind of pothole and went down. Daniel started to slow, to turn back and help her, but she waved him off, and he heard Jack tell him to keep going, so he did. Now wasn't the time to suss out why he was being told to leave Sam and go for the DHD. He just had to assume Jack knew what he was telling Daniel to do, and trust the colonel was right. When it came to matters of strategy and survival, Jack usually was.

Daniel all but crashed into the DHD more than actually finding it in the fog. Clinging to the sides of it to keep his balance, Daniel scrambled in his head for the symbols that had seemed so clear when he and Sam had begun their run. Suddenly his mind was half-blank. He was out of breath, dizzy with it, and fear was trying to take over. He felt himself shaking against the DHD, and he couldn't seem to take in enough air to clear his head. Daniel's heartbeat was loud enough in his ears to drown out the thunder. It felt like an hour passed before he was able to remember the symbols he needed, but he knew that wasn't true because he'd gotten to the third symbol in the sequence before Sam managed to limp over to him.

"You got it?" she asked.

"Yeah," Daniel replied, amazed to hear the dead calm in his voice, "You okay?"

"I'll live," Sam replied coolly, and he knew she was more annoyed by the hindrance the injury represented to both her and the team than anything.

"Go on ahead, I'll finish the sequence," Daniel said, nodding to where the Stargate loomed out of the fog like some sort of leviathan out of myth, looking more like a thing alive than a piece of technology.

Sam nodded wordlessly and set off. Daniel was almost finished dialing anyway and would catch up with her shortly. But as he was finishing the sequence, he heard the roars suddenly get louder. The howlers were no longer in the trees, and they weren't only coming from the direction SG-1 had. The howlers had them surrounded.

"Jack! Teal'c!" Daniel shouted, a moment before the roar of the howlers was drowned out by the sound of the Stargate activating, which also prevented Jack and Teal'c from hearing anything he tried to say after their names; so he could only hope it was enough warning.

It was. Both Jack and Teal'c retreated from their positions, rapidly overtaking Sam. Without waiting to see if she would protest, they each took an arm and hauled her up the steps to the 'gate. Daniel followed them but -halfway between the DHD and the 'gate, he was tackled by a howler.

It hit like a freight train, sending Daniel sprawling. But it had misjudged its leap slightly, as well as the slippery nature of the wet grass. After hitting him, it tumbled past him, rolled in the grass and flailed violently for a moment before it regained its feet. In the meantime, Daniel had reflexively curled up to protect himself. When the howler came screeching at him a second time, he kicked out.

The howler should have been agile enough to evade him. Either it slipped on the grass, or had seen Daniel's passivity up until now and was taken by complete surprise, because the boot connected with a sickening crunch, and the howler wailed as it was knocked back.

Trembling, clumsily trying to get to his feet, Daniel didn't protest when he found Jack had come back for him. He just accepted the hand up. Teal'c and Sam must already have been through, because Daniel didn't see them. Unhurt but terrified both of being left behind or losing Jack to the howlers, Daniel clung to Jack's shoulder, unmindful of the pain in his right arm at his doing so. Jack seemed just as determined to hang onto him, without regard for the injury to his left hand.

Together, the two of them made the painful but brief run up the steps, and plunged through the Stargate, into the swirl of stars and ice and blackness.


	13. This Side of the Gate

The Stargate spat Jack and Daniel unceremoniously out the other side. Concerned more with speed than grace, Jack tumbled and rolled down the unexpectedly sharp embankment this particular Stargate happened to be perched on, coming to a stop directly atop Daniel, who had of course fallen with him.

"Ow," Daniel grunted as Jack rolled off him.

Jack patted Daniel's shoulder with his good hand, half as a breathless response to the comment and half to reassure himself that he and Daniel really had made it to the other side intact. Daniel certainly felt solid enough, so Jack decided it might be a good idea to sit up and get eyes on Teal'c and Carter, and find out where the hell they'd been sent, because by necessity it sure wasn't the 'Gate Room back home. Without their IDC, the team would've been guaranteed to splat right into the iris if they'd gone home.

"Ow," Jack groaned as he sat up, unconsciously sounding just like Daniel had a moment before.

Carter and Teal'c were a few feet away, shamelessly having landed on their feet. Or Teal'c had anyway, and he was supporting Carter, so the effect was the same. Jack peered around, and found the landscape looked more typical of off-world locations than the place they'd just left. Then he looked back at Daniel, who had so far declined to get up.

"Daniel?" Jack inquired, maybe slightly worried.

"I'm good," Daniel replied, his voice muffled because he was face down in the grass, "Just don't ask me to get up until my head stops spinning."

Jack was about to respond to this, when Teal'c shouted a warning.

"O'Neill!"

Snapping his head around, Jack noted which direction Teal'c was looking in, and he followed the Jaffa's gaze. He had assumed the howlers wouldn't follow them through the 'Gate. Confronted with the terrible power of the Stargate, most people tended to shrink from it, even those who knew what it was and what it was for. But about a half dozen of the howlers had summoned the courage to pursue their escaped prisoners even here. They came through with faces contorted with rage, but a moment later stood rather dazed, blinking in the sudden brightness. The courage of one deserted him and he tried to flee back through the Stargate, just a hair too late (fortunately for him), for it deactivated and he went tumbling through the empty ring and rolled noisily down the slope on the opposite side from Jack and the rest of SG-1. The other howlers jumped at the deactivation of the 'Gate, and one began to chatter nervously at what was evidently their leader.

Blowing through his nose disdainfully, this lead monkey turned away from the Stargate to survey SG-1.

Teal'c and Carter stood where they were. Jack stayed sat where he was. At Teal'c's warning, Daniel had rolled over and gotten as far as pushing himself up on his elbows, but there he'd stopped to wait and see what the howlers would do now they were on alien turf.

"Feels like the worst mistake of your life, doesn't it?" Jack asked the monkey when they locked eyes.

The howler flinched first, lowering his gaze deferentially. Outside his home range, cut off from his clan, the howler's aggression deserted him, even though he was brave enough not to run or start babbling like his companions. Probably for the first time in the memory of his race, he stood on an alien world, having journeyed through the Stargate as none of his kind had since before they had begun to record their history. Jack was impressed by the courage of the howler, if not by his foolhardiness.

Seeing the Stargate for the first time, Jack doubted he'd have gone through it without the recon that had already been done, allowing him to see what was on the other side, and be reassured by scientists that he wouldn't be ripped to atoms by the Stargate (or at least he'd be put back together before he was spat out the other side, half frozen and nearly sick; 'Gate travel had improved a lot since then).

The lead howler looked around to make sure the one that had tried to bolt was coming back. Irritably he snarled at the one that was chattering at him, and then bopped it on the head to make it silent. The cuffed monkey ducked away and hid behind his companions, but shut up anyway.

"Looks kinda like a Leroy, doesn't he?" Jack said of the lead howler.

"We should probably get them off the dais," Daniel remarked, carefully neither moving nor adding any special inflection to his tone, presumably to avoid alarming their uninvited tagalongs, "SG-13 is due... sometime soon?" he sort of looked at Carter as he trailed off.

"Within the next couple of hours..." Carter said with a shrug, "Give or take."

None of them had their watches anymore. The howlers had been fascinated by the devices. Not only was it hard to measure time in a prison where nothing really happened to mark it, the cloud cover today had made time estimation by sun position thoroughly impossible. And it was probably a different time altogether here, and clearly neither Daniel or Carter could recall the time differential. Jack couldn't blame them, he couldn't even remember what the address SG-13 was supposed to be visiting today was. He wasn't sure how Carter and Daniel managed to keep so many addresses in their heads.

He was pretty sure part of it was that the addresses didn't look random to them. Jack was no slouch when it came to astronomy, but Carter's understanding of astrophysics left him absolutely in the dust. And of course Daniel's knowledge of ancient cultures and the significance of the stars to them and all that probably gave him an unfair advantage. Anyway. This line of thought wasn't getting the monkeys off the dais or away from the Stargate.

"Are you sure we can't just... you know..." Jack looked at Daniel.

"They're not _evil_ , Jack," Daniel snapped, "They're just confused."

"I was afraid you were gonna say that," Jack replied, though in truth he'd've been worried if Daniel had said anything else, because it would have gone against the man's character as he understood it.

Shakily, not quite trusting his legs, Jack got up. When he'd gone back for Daniel, he'd stumbled and landed hard on one knee. It felt badly bruised, and clearly resented the misuse. His knees weren't what they'd once been, and they complained bitterly at what seemed like the slightest strain. Even so, he managed not to stagger on his way upright, and managed to avoid a showing limp when he took a couple of steps to see how his balance was.

By this time, Daniel had sat up properly and folded his legs under him, but worryingly stopped there. The way he'd closed his eyes as if against pain suggested he'd done more than just spin on his way down, he must've hit his head. He'd mentioned the world spinning, and Jack suspected Daniel might still be seeing stars despite no longer being in the wormhole of the Stargate itself. He decided to leave Daniel alone for the moment, and instead turned to address the howlers.

Lacking any proper means of communication, he fell back on the ancient way of letting an animal know it was not meant to be perched on that piece of décor. He waved his hands dismissively and said 'shoo' in one of his least threatening voices, trying to make it clear that he wanted them off but didn't really mean them any harm at this juncture. The howlers stared dumbly at him.

Jack glanced at Daniel again, but there was no help there yet. He turned to Carter and Teal'c, but they were no more use than Danny. Clearly it was being left to Jack to figure out how to get these monkeys off the dais. He supposed he could just chase them, but he didn't really want to start the fighting up again, and he really wasn't sure it was a good idea to scatter them to an alien forest. Even with their lost nerve, the howlers could probably kill SG-1, at the least mauling them badly before it was over. Jack saw no reason to test his luck out that way.

"You need to get off the... thing," he realized the words would do no good, but he tried miming picking something up and putting it somewhere else.

Leroy barked at him, a sound that wasn't quite a roar or a hoot, but was very much a threat sound. Evidently something Jack had done or said looked dangerous, and the howler was telling him not to do it again, or perhaps to keep his distance. With lowered head, Leroy flashed his canines, looking up at Jack from hooded eyes, like a frightened and cornered dog that sees no other option but to bite if the human hand comes any closer.

"Maybe they'll get off on their own," Carter suggested, "Start exploring if we leave them alone."

"Yeah and maybe they won't," Jack replied flatly.

In a strange way, he felt a kinship with these howlers. They weren't the policy makers in their troop. He didn't even recognize them as the monkeys who'd been standing guard over SG-1 all this time. They were just foot-soldiers, going where their masters sent them, protecting their own as they understood how. Not unlike Jack himself. The way the group hung around Leroy was familiar to him, and he recognize the sort of bewildered hopelessness of the leader who doesn't know what to do but knows he can't admit that to his followers or else they'll panic and lose hope on him.

"Daniel," Jack said, waiting until Daniel's eyes opened, but not expecting them to focus in his direction (they didn't), "I'm not asking you to get up, but you gotta give me _something_."

For a moment, it looked like he was being hung out to dry. But then Daniel took a breath and rubbed his forehead for a moment. After that, he put his hand down where the grass had been torn away when he and Jack had landed, and started drawing something in the dirt without really looking at it.

Leroy barked again, but more inquisitively, with less hostility. Daniel persisted, looking neither at the drawing nor the howlers, clearly working from feel and memory. Jack wasn't sure if that was because Daniel couldn't see, or if he was trying to avoid being intimidating to the howlers.

Bobbing his head, Leroy stepped to the edge of the dais and peered at what Daniel was drawing. He tilted and turned his head, frustrated that he couldn't quite see until Daniel was finished. And then it turned out the howler still couldn't see on account of the steep angle.

Snarling a clear instruction at the others to stay, Leroy hesitantly came down the steps of the dais, one at a time, looking around suspiciously at each one as if it might bite him. He hesitated to touch the ground beyond the dais, foreign soil to him. But then he eased over it, sidling up to Daniel, who pointedly averted his gaze.

Leroy sat down to study the markings Daniel had made. He picked his nose for a bit, then scratched his head. Finally, to Jack's relief, he made a chuffing noise that seemed to beckon the other howlers off the dais. They shuffled off slowly, worried and fearful, but they came to him one after the other, then sat in a huddle around him, looking at the markings without apparent comprehension.

"What did you say to him?" Jack asked wonderingly.

"Uh... roughly translated... 'come look at this.'" Daniel said, sounding a bit embarrassed as he added, "It was all I could think of."

After the howlers had investigated the full depth and breadth of this sentence, they sat in a tightly packed huddle, rotated their heads and stared at Daniel, not with menace but with cautiously veiled curiosity. They looked so much smaller outside their home, so ridiculous out on open ground all sitting in a pile that it was hard to believe these were the same creatures that had chewed up and captured SG-1. These were the same creatures that had harassed and bullied them, the same ones that had chased them through the jungle, the very ones who might've killed them.

But with their fangs carefully sheathed, their hands sort of grasping futilely at each others fur as if seeking reassurance in their pitifully small numbers, tails curled protectively around one another, bodies hunkered down and shivering a little with the shock of it all, their faces suddenly became more expressive, and they were almost cute. _Almost_.

"I think you'll have to think of something else," Carter said, "To say, I mean."

Daniel looked thoughtful. More than that though, he still looked a little dizzy, and Jack didn't like that. Not that there was anything he could do about it, but it worried him. Head injuries were a messy, unpredictable business, and Jack had had his share of them.

Finally Daniel wiped away what he'd written and started working on something else. In utter silence, and with rapt attention, the howlers observed as he did so. When he finished, they peered at the writing, but only some of them seemed to understand it. Jack wasn't sure if it was because Daniel didn't have a good grasp of the written language, or if it was that only some of the monkeys knew how to read. Of course, the other possibility was that Daniel knew the language and the monkeys could read fine, but Daniel's ability to write distinctly had been compromised. Jack didn't want to think about that.

By this point, Carter had sat down against a convenient boulder, and Jack had joined her. Teal'c, evidently satisfied the monkeys weren't a threat for the moment, was scouting the area.

If he weren't so tired, Jack might've harassed Daniel endlessly about what he said to the monkeys. As it was, he was satisfied to just watch Daniel work. He was glad they were all free, all together, and all more or less in one piece. Too easily could it have been otherwise. Carter must have felt the same weariness, for she did not make any remarks until Leroy started writing responses to Daniel, at which time she nudged the half-dozing Jack to get his attention.

"So, how's it going over there?" Jack asked, pleased to see Daniel's eyes had finally focused on what he was writing, and that he was able to locate Jack when he looked around.

"They're scared," Daniel said, "But I think it's going well."

Jack grunted. Sometimes it was easier to communicate with the boots on the ground than the superiors in their offices and ivory towers. Of course, Daniel was also getting better at the written language of the howlers. And this particular pack was highly motivated to understand him instead of yanking his chain. Jack supposed the little pack of monkeys might consider themselves POWs, assuming they had concept for such a thing. Certainly they were cut off from all support, and must presume this was where SG-1 had come from. Surely they could imagine that more humans might be along any time. At least Daniel they were familiar with. At least Daniel they knew was inclined towards peaceful interaction (though he had really clocked the howler that had jumped him right before they made it through the Stargate).

"Daniel," Jack said, and waited for Daniel to look in his direction again, "We're not keeping them."

"No, I know," Daniel replied.

"When we get home, the first thing we do is send 'em right back where they belong."

"I know," Daniel said.

"I mean it," Jack persisted.

"Jack," Daniel answered, "You're the one who brought Teal'c home, not me."

Jack felt a momentary annoyance at this truth, but then he saw Daniel's grin, and he found he was so glad to see a genuine smile on the face of one of his team mates that he forgot to be irritated. Instead he laughed, and nodded agreeably. Daniel was right, of course. Jack _had_ been the one to bring Teal'c home, and to fight for the Jaffa to be allowed onto their team. But if he hadn't, he was sure Daniel would've tried. The two of them were very different, and probably always would be, but not in the ways that really mattered.

* * *

A few hours later, it was proven that Daniel had made a good call. The Stargate activated, and SG-1 along with the howlers ducked just in case it wasn't friendlies. But then the familiar shape of the MALP appeared and the device trundled noisily down to flat ground to peer around.

Jack stepped out from behind the rock he'd been using as cover, and waved for the camera. A little over half an hour later, SG-1 was back home, along with the monkeys they'd picked up. The monkeys were shepherded to temporary isolation quarters to keep them out of trouble, SG-1 was ruthlessly driven by Dr. Fraser into the infirmary, where she and her nurses immediately set to work on them. That is, all except Teal'c. Seemingly only a little scratched, Teal'c was allowed to go free and make SG-1's report to General Hammond before reporting in to the infirmary (Teal'c had learned long ago not to waste effort claiming it was unnecessary for minor injuries; Janet Fraser was a tiny tyrant with a medical degree who wouldn't have tolerated protests from the President of the United States had he been a potential patient of hers).

Sure enough, Jack's hand was broken, and one of the spots where the thorns had stuck him the first day had started to get infected. Carter had gotten away with a sprained ankle. Daniel had gotten the most chewed and beat up, but surprisingly had taken the least damage, all of his bites, scratches and bruises being superficial, though Dr. Fraser did want to keep him under observation on account of the head injury, a prescription he opted not to buck.

Between the pain relievers they were given and it just flat seeming like too much trouble to go to the surface and get home, the team opted to stay at the SGC, though Jack and Carter did escape the infirmary at the first opportunity, preferring the quarters that had been set up for them as senior staff of the SGC. Jack's quarters were like a small, ugly, windowless hotel with no room service, but to Jack they had almost become more home than his actual house, because he seemed to spend more time at the SGC than he did anywhere else on Earth.

Daniel was obliged to remain in the infirmary while Dr. Fraser was monitoring his condition, something he was very sulky about. All of SG-1 resented infirmary time, to such an extent that they usually wouldn't even hang around long if one of their number was stuck there. They'd stop for a brief visit, but then they were out. The only time they spent a lot of time in the infirmary when they weren't under Fraser's orders was during a vigil for a friend in critical condition. Then you could count on one or more of the team to be present at all times, much to the annoyance of Fraser's nurses, who found SG-teams running around loose underfoot to be highly inconvenient (this being another reason nobody hung out in the infirmary if they didn't have to; it was a courtesy to the medical staff, who had limited space to work with. Despite plenty of space for a medical wing, the bunker had not been designed for large numbers of casualties at once; most of the rooms were long and narrow).

After a quick nap, Jack made his way unerringly to the base mess, where he was not surprised to find both Carter and Teal'c. Because of the 24/7 nature of what went on at the SGC, and the differing time zones teams had to adjust to coming and going from planets, there was always fresh food available in quantity for whoever wanted it, even aside from the stuff that would keep like cereal and several kinds of bread. Normally the team all liked an amount of fruit, though Teal'c most of all, but not one of the three touched a single fruit-like food this time. In fact, Jack didn't feel like having anything sweet today, and so avoided the desserts as well for once. He felt like he'd had enough sugar to last him to the end of the week, if not for the rest of his life. He did go for some coffee though.

"Oh, _Coffee_ , how I have missed thee," Jack said, and then he drank an entire mug of the brew in a couple of gulps; amusedly ignoring Carter's wide-eyed stare.

When he put his coffee cup down, he looked at her and grinned, to kind of reassure her that he was being goofy on purpose. So often odd behavior was the signal that things were about to get messy because someone was diseased or possessed or replaced by a clone or something. Carter smiled back, and he could see his relief that they were all alive and well and home mirrored in her blue eyes. Somehow it just wasn't real that a mission was over until they got to sit down and take a breath, eat some food, drink some coffee and crack some lame jokes.

Teal'c as usual seemed not to have been ruffled by the experience, though it looked like he'd taken about half the available food in the mess and dumped it onto a tray for consumption. With Teal'c, lunch was a lengthy, methodical affair. Jack never did quite lose the wonder at Teal'c's capacity, and he had sometimes half-wondered if he could steal the Jaffa away for a hotdog eating contest at a County Fair or something. Teal'c could probably eat all his hotdogs and those of the other contestants and still have room to spare for pie after. The sight of the Jaffa's steady and surprisingly quiet eating was further proof all was right with the world again.

After eating all he could comfortably hold, Jack sat back in his chair with a sigh, and just kind of watched while Teal'c continued to eat. Carter too seemed disinclined to get up and move after she'd finished. But there also somehow didn't seem to be much to say, or any need to say it.

In truth, Daniel was the major talker of their group, and meals were invariably pretty quiet without him. But on his way into the mess Jack had run into a nurse, who had said Daniel was sleeping when she went off for lunch. Jack always had trouble sleeping in hospitals, even if it was just the infirmary at the SGC, but that sort of thing never did seem to trouble Daniel. Daniel could sleep just about anywhere, Jack supposed. Jack liked to think he could also do that, but Daniel just always had to go that extra annoying mile, in this case meaning he could even sleep in a hospital bed.

"What do you suppose will happen to the howlers?" Carter asked suddenly.

Jack knew she was just opening conversation. She knew as well as he did what was likely to happen.

"Probably Ol' Doc Fraser'll examine 'em, and then we'll ship 'em home," Jack replied, "May have to wait for Daniel to wake up though. The monkeys like him now."

It actually had less to do with liking him, and more to do with understanding him. While waiting on the planet, Daniel had put in several hours of communication with the monkeys. Jack didn't know what all they'd talked about, but Jack could tell it had been more in-depth than 'How-do-you-do.' They weren't Ents after all. As it had turned out, they weren't a lot like the Bandar-Log either, seeing as they seemed to have a purpose and organization that was at least vaguely recognizable even to Jack.

"Knowing Daniel, he'll try to establish a dialogue," Jack muttered, half annoyed and half amused by that potential reality, "Once he gets a taste of success, he never lets go."

"Even if he doesn't," Carter corrected mildly, "He'll do what he thinks is right."

"Well I for one have had it with the ape-men and their planet," Jack said, "So Daniel can talk all he wants, but I'm not goin' back there, and neither is SG-1."

Carter said nothing, but laughter danced in her eyes when she looked at him. They both knew full well that, if Daniel pushed hard enough, he was likely to get his way. Daniel could be highly persuasive when he wanted to be, and vicious if he had to be. He'd fight or he'd grovel, no hesitation or shame in either, just so long as he managed to make himself heard. If Daniel really thought it important to go back to that godforsaken jungle planet, he'd find a way to make it happen. It didn't matter how long it took, or how much anyone protested, or who he had to verbally thrash or which boots he might have to lick. Daniel was relentless in his pursuit of a goal.

"We're not going back," Jack insisted.

"I didn't say anything," Carter said, but there was a bit of a giggle under her words that Jack couldn't help but hear, and she exchanged a significant glance with Teal'c who for his part looked suspiciously cheerful, like he wanted to laugh too, but was unwilling to sacrifice his grave dignity to do so.

"We're _not_ ," Jack repeated, but even he wasn't deaf to the weakness in his voice as he said it.


	14. Callback

Daniel had actually slept through most of his incarceration by Dr. Fraser and her team. He hadn't gotten much sleep on the howler's planet, and what little he'd gotten had been troubled. By the time his system felt sufficiently recovered to actually stay conscious for a little while, he was given the green light to leave the infirmary, though he was warned not to try driving anywhere.

Faintly he wondered if that mechanic had finally gotten his car fixed. It felt like a long time since he'd been telling that guy off for not doing his job, but really it had only been a few days, so he supposed that it would be too optimistic to suppose the car was repaired.

It took some hunting around to find where Fraser's staff had left his clothes. When the team got back, they had all been urged to shower, possibly with assistance if they needed it. None of them had taken that offer, but they had gotten cleaned up and been temporarily put into Fraser's favorite hospital attire until they were released. Jack, Sam and Teal'c had gone off in dirty clothes, but Daniel had been held long enough that his had been laundered and squirreled away in some cabinet somewhere. He managed to locate them, got dressed and then drifted off to his office.

There was always a period of time after a mission when Daniel felt sort of cast off, adrift and lost in a big ocean without a compass. It just took him a bit to get his bearings, to shift from running for his life through an alien jungle to worrying about whether he'd paid his electric bill on time.

On the way to his office, Daniel stopped by the mess and got a thermos of tea. He was a coffee guy at heart, but he'd learned from his parents before they died that tea could act as a natural antihistamine. Those hadn't been their words to him, but they'd taught him that it could bring relief. He'd carried that knowledge with him everywhere he went for years. Dr. Fraser had introduced him to other foods that could act as antihistamines fairly recently, but none were as effective as tea. In fact, tea often seemed more effective than medication, particularly once allergies were already in play. He'd stopped countless allergy-caused headaches in their tracks with a well-timed cup of tea.

By the time he reached his office, the fog that had descended on his mind almost from the start of the mission was clearing, and he didn't feel as fatigued as he had before. His sore throat persisted, but he knew the tea would take care of that given time and assuming he didn't get so absorbed in working on something that he forgot to keep drinking it.

Almost without really meaning to, he fell into thinking about the howlers. Not what had happened with them, or what they'd done to him or even what they'd wanted with him and his team. No, what drew his thoughts was the question as to where they'd come from, and why. What the Goa'uld had wanted with them, for surely it was the Goa'uld that had taken them out there.

The range of howler monkeys on Earth was mostly the northern parts of South America and Central America. The black howler monkey, the species Daniel was most familiar with, was almost exclusive to Brazil. The national language of Brazil was Portuguese. The odd thing was that Portugal's taking over of Brazil was relatively recent, within the last five hundred years. Ra, who had ruled on Earth, had been overthrown thousands and thousands of years before that. A few Goa'uld, such as Hathor, had remained in evidence... but the majority of them had been slain or buried or otherwise incapacitated long before the Spaniards or Portuguese showed up on South America.

And yet, regardless of what history seemed to indicate, a Goa'uld _must_ have visited South America and taken human slaves, because -once identified- there was no doubt but that the language was Portuguese. Encountering familiar languages off-world was normal for Daniel, and he'd come to understand that it was important to know how the language had been used at the time the split off from Earth occurred in order to understand the changes it inevitably went through.

A resident of Brazil would find the "Portuguese" portions of the stone scrawl very difficult -if not fully impossible- to read, not only because the language on Earth had changed so much in five hundred years, but because it had also changed off-world, but in a different way. Recognizing the root language made it easier to narrow down the possibilities, but in the end Daniel had to treat most writings he found as if they had been written in languages which were dead on Earth.

Of course, if Sam was right about what the cylindrical device had been part of or used for, the alien howlers might well have been human once, before some Goa'uld had played musical chairs with their genetics. But they'd come to resemble howler monkeys far too closely for it to be sheer coincidence, hadn't they? Or was it the other way around? Daniel found it a little far-fetched to think that way, but he'd found that turning an idea on its head, however ludicrous it seemed, could sometimes start a new branch of thought, even if the idea itself was the wrong one and even more ridiculous upside down than right side up. So he pondered for a moment the possibility that howler monkeys had been essentially created from something else by the Goa'uld, or perhaps carted here from an alien world.

Possible, assuredly. Ra's cats were undoubtedly not the only animals Goa'uld had ever kept as pets and ornamentation. But if howlers had come here with the Goa'uld, what did that say about all the other apes, to which they were closely related? Daniel didn't know. Genetics wasn't his thing, so he couldn't guess how closely related apes were to one another. He also didn't know how similar -genetically speaking- the alien races they had encountered were to, say, humans. They got very little opportunity to study most alien lifeforms on that level.

More likely, it seemed to him, the monkeys had been here, and the Goa'uld had "borrowed" them. But why use those as the model for genetic experimentation? It couldn't be a coincidence, could it? The alien howlers were much larger than their Earth relatives (if they were related), and possessed of fangs the likes of which no Earth howler had and few apes of any sort could compare with. They also built structures that were unlike those which certain Earth apes might design. If anything, the design was reminiscent of bird nests. But language and writing... apes could learn hand signs, could probably learn to read Daniel supposed... but... there was something distinctly familiar about their thought patterns. As he replayed events in his head, Daniel was more and more certain Sam was right. Somewhere back in their ancestral line, the howlers had been human.

Which meant that Jack, with his quips with regards to _Planet of the Apes_ , had also not been far off.

It wasn't just scholarly curiosity that had Daniel in its grip; any information on the Goa'uld's history could provide more insight into their present. As far as Daniel was concerned, you couldn't know too much about the enemy. Even though Jack didn't understand it from the same perspective, Daniel knew that they were actually agreed on that point. This was a fragment of Goa'uld history, the value of which was inestimable at this time. Daniel had uncovered a lot about the Goa'uld that had seemed useless at the time he acquired the information, but it had saved his skin, not to mention his team -and Earth- more than once.

The phone rang. Absently, still lost in thought, he picked it up.

" _Hello, Daniel."_

Daniel bristled at the sound of the familiar, dreaded voice, and his mind snapped to attention. It was the voice, more than anything, that had crawled into his nightmares while he was still a kid. Not all nightmare monsters from his dreams talked, but all of them had that voice. To hear it here, at the SGC, was unthinkable, and for the moment he was more angry than afraid, but most of all he was confused.

"How the hell did you get this number?"

Instead of answering, the caller spoke, clearly reading, _"'Sha're is gone, Jack says we'll find her. If anyone can, he can.' Who's Sha're, Daniel? And what or where is Abydos?"_

Daniel felt his blood run cold. He closed his eyes, trying to breathe, to stifle the profound feeling of violation that washed over him as he realized where the caller was calling from, and how they'd gotten the number for his office at the SGC. It was in at least one of his notebooks at his apartment. The voice on the line was coming from his _home_.

"Get out of my house," he snarled.

" _Now is that any way to treat an old friend? Daniel, really, where are your manners?"_

"You were never my friend," Daniel said, then repeated, "Now get out. I mean it."

" _Like you meant it before?"_

"I'm not nine anymore," that was truth. "And I'm not afraid of you," that was a lie.

" _See you when you get home, Danny."_

The line went dead, but it was still several seconds before Daniel managed to hang up the phone. When he did, he was alarmed to see that he was shaking badly. He sat down in his office chair and tried to steady his breathing. Eventually he realized he was mangling a notebook in his hands and he made a conscious effort to stop, forcing himself to relax, to breathe slowly and deeply, calming his nerves.

Finally, mechanically, he laid aside the notebook, setting it on the table island in his office. The howlers could wait. Right now, he had a home invasion to deal with. It was a breach of privacy, home and sanctuary... _and National Security._

Daniel was allowed to keep his private journals for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that nobody further up the chain than Jack knew about them. But they were also not exactly prominently displayed, and -to a thief- most of what Daniel had would look far more interesting than a few slim, leather-bound notebooks. Only someone who knew Daniel, knew his habit of writing journals, and wanted to read those would pick them up. Well, that or someone cleaning out his apartment because they thought he was dead. One of those.

But the information in those journals... admittedly they were mostly his personal accounts, not a bunch of security codes or extensive descriptions of tech, but there was enough in those journals to make some people squirm if the information ever got out. And Chianti knew Daniel well enough to realize that those journals weren't the notes for some fictional story he was working on.

It could never be said that Daniel had much of a life before the Stargate. Certainly since he'd joined the SGC, he'd had time and attention for little else. There weren't any old friends looking him up, no stray family members wanting to sleep on his couch. He'd never had to deal with anyone he knew finding out about the Stargate Program before, because there _was_ no one. His whole life for the last three years had been based around trying to get Sha're back, and the way to do that had been to work for the SGC. It was all he knew anymore. Not that he'd ever really connected with the modern world to begin with.

He didn't even realize he'd gotten up and left his office until he ran shoulder-to-shoulder into someone in the hall. He hurriedly apologized, and kept going, not even sure where he was headed. The tech he'd hit barely even looked up to acknowledge him. Daniel was infamous around the base for running into people and dropping things when he was distracted, which was pretty much always. Base personnel were used to watching for him and usually managed to dodge him when he was on his way somewhere. However, subconsciously they were actually keeping an eye out for a pile of papers or notebooks being carried, and Daniel wasn't carrying anything right now.

By the time he was in the elevator, Daniel had figured out where he was going, and why. He was more cautious when he emerged from the elevator, not worried about who might see him, but engaging the part of his mind he needed right now, the part that knew how to survive. Obstacle avoidance was in that part of his mind, and he maneuvered rapidly down the hall, rapidly dodging base personnel as he went until he got to the locker room. He hesitated at his own locker, not sure what he was doing made sense. But survival instinct took over and he opened the locker, retrieving the M9 he was permitted to carry on his person at all times. Jack had insisted that Daniel get a permit to carry a weapon on Earth, outside the SGC. He'd also insisted Daniel keep a weapon somewhere in his apartment.

At first, Daniel had resisted the idea of having a home weapon. But Jack had insisted that their work might easily come home to roost, or they could find themselves needing to become armed without having access to the SGC for any number of other reasons. The base had been virtually taken over by enough alien entities enough times that Daniel was finally convinced. He'd also discovered that, after finding himself facing deadly situation after deadly situation, where a firearm had been the only thing to stand between him and death, he simply slept better at night knowing he could reach a weapon.

He didn't like it, but it was true.

That gun was in a box in the closet in what would be the second bedroom in the apartment if Daniel hadn't converted the space into an office that attached to the master bedroom. Daniel didn't have to worry about children or other members of the household, but he kept his gun out of sight even if the closet was opened, and out of reach of anyone shorter than he was. He kept telling himself he'd get a gun safe, just to be extra secure about it, but he'd been so focused on what happened during missions that he had little time for anything else. On the rare days he was home, the last thing he wanted was to be reminded of the violent side of himself that had been revealed by the Stargate Program. Also he was usually so exhausted when he got home that he spent entire weekends sleeping.

His concern was that the gun might now be in the hands of James Chianti. He wasn't sure if Chianti would know how to use a gun if he found one, but he was pretty sure the man would _try,_ and that might be worse.

The man had broken into his home, rifled through his things, and was lying in wait for him there. Daniel didn't want to use the M9 he'd picked up, but he knew survival depended on being prepared for the worst. And, if worst came to worst, Daniel was probably a better shot than a guy who'd been locked up in prison for over two decades. Daniel wasn't the only person Chianti had hurt, but he'd been a big part of the case that got the man put away. His past might be doing more than coming back to haunt him.

"Going duck hunting?" the sound of Jack's voice was so wholly unexpected that Daniel jumped, barely keeping a safe hold on the M9 as he turned to face his friend.

Jack was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame, looking as if he'd been there since the dawn of time. Daniel knew Jack must have seen him go by in the hall, but Daniel hadn't noticed him.

"No," Daniel said, setting down the M9 and picking up the shoulder holster for it.

In the field, Daniel wore his gun at his hip. But in civilian attire it was generally best to keep guns out of sight, otherwise people panicked. So he had a shoulder holster, and a jacket that concealed it. And of course they all had M9s in their lockers. The small guns were easy to store there, and they all knew that it was best to have guns all over the base. If you got chased by an alien, it was good not to have to go all the way to the armory if you wanted anything bigger than a boot knife to defend yourself with.

Before his time at the SGC, Daniel would have thought the number of guns they had around was ludicrous and paranoid. But experience had made a wiser man out of him, and now he never quite felt safe unless he knew there was a gun somewhere within two hundred yards of him. Even then, the SG-teams often encountered aliens immune (or near enough) to bullets.

"Rabbiting then?" Jack persisted, continuing when Daniel ignored him, "Well it's not deer season and you can't catch fish with an M9."

"You've tried it?" Daniel asked, half-heartedly trying to distract Jack as he holstered the M9 and shrugged into the jacket it would be concealed beneath.

"No," Jack replied a little too quickly, and Daniel had a sudden, vivid image of a young Jack with a shotgun trying to shoot fish out of the lake.

He didn't feel loose enough to laugh about that, but shook his head to clear it. He started toward the door, but Jack stood leaning firmly in his way. It was clear from his eyes he was not distracted, and he knew Daniel was off to do something dangerous, and possibly foolish. It was no longer unusual for Daniel to be geared up like this when he left the SGC, but he didn't wonder how Jack could know. Jack just _knew_ some things. Besides, Jack could read intent in Daniel's eyes just as well as Daniel could read it in his. The perks and drawbacks of knowing each other so well. The same almost psychic connection that had kept them together and all on the same page in the jungle now told Jack that Daniel was going off to put himself into a lion's den, and he wasn't praying to God before he went.

"He's in my apartment, Jack," Daniel said, "He's read my journals."

Jack didn't ask who Daniel was talking about. Despite time and various distracting events, Jack had not forgotten what Daniel had said about James Chianti. Daniel had known he would not. He also saw in Jack's eyes that Jack would not allow him to go alone.

"I'm coming too," Jack said unnecessarily.

"Jack..." Daniel tried feebly to think up a protest.

"You're not allowed to drive, Danny," Jack said, going to his locker and pulling out his own holstered M9, which he checked before strapping on the holster.

Jack knew exactly where Daniel kept the box for his weapon. When Daniel had been unsure of the best place to store it to not only keep it from being easily discovered but also give him easy access, it had been Jack he'd turned to. Jack's remark at the time was that he dared any would-be burglar to tell the valuables from the junk in Daniel's apartment. But even though it was the sort of joke he usually would have made, he didn't even suggest leaving the gun box amidst all the other 'knickknacks and whatchamacallits' that were crowded onto every available surface in Daniel's apartment.

He knew as well as Daniel that the box the M9 was kept in looked pretty innocuous. One thing Jack had told him was that the way to keep people out of your stuff was to make it look, as he'd put it "Damned boring. Which shouldn't be hard for you." There was nothing about the box to suggest its contents were anything other than just the same kind of thing that was in every other closet in the apartment. Even though he regularly checked the M9, Daniel allowed an amount of dust to collect on the box so it matched the rest of the stuff in the closet, all of which looked as if it had been haphazardly stuffed in there and forgotten. And it had, all except for that box.

Jack also knew that anyone who'd found the journals might well have found the gun also.

"Besides," Jack added, "Your car is still in the shop anyway."

Daniel opened his mouth to protest, but closed it again. In truth, he was glad of the company. In truth, he knew Jack was right. In truth, he did not really want to meet this lion in his living room alone.

"Alright," He sighed, "Just so long as you don't make me clean his blood out of my carpet."

"Your carpet is covered in rugs, Danny," Jack reminded him, pulling on his jacket as they headed out of the locker room.

"Yes, and they're not machine washable," Daniel tossed back.

"Why would you _ever_ put something on the floor that you couldn't wash?" Jack asked.

"I'm not really home that much and I don't get many visitors even when I am," Daniel responded.

Jack thought that over and nodded slightly.

They fell into an awkward silence as they rode the elevator to the surface, saying nothing further until just before the doors opened.

It was funny to think that a man who actively practiced ignorance the way Jack did somehow knew so much. Sometimes Daniel wondered how he'd gotten to have a friend such as Jack. He knew how their lives had intersected, of course. The Stargate. Sometimes it seemed like he'd never really been alive, never really even existed before he first saw that massive ring in the missile silo.

Daniel had never really fit in on Earth, he'd never belonged much of anywhere. He'd forged only a few friendships, most of which he'd been unable to maintain because of his obsession with his work, and also the internal fear that none of the people around him really liked him much, and the sure feeling that all he would do in the end was make their lives miserable, dragging them down with him as he destroyed first whatever hope he had of a personal life and then his professional career.

But with Jack, Daniel wasn't afraid. Jack had already been to his lowest point, and Daniel had been there to witness it. Nothing he could do or say could ever equal that. In essence, Daniel felt safe around Jack because he knew he couldn't hurt the older man any more than he'd already been hurt, and he also knew that Jack would never pretend to like him if he didn't. Jack didn't have it in him to be nice for the sake of politeness. In fact, he seemed to take it as a personal challenge to be as unmannerly as he could get away with in almost any given situation. It was a huge pain in the neck to deal with, especially in the field, because Daniel often found himself working twice as hard to make a good impression on others. But it also provided him with a significant amount of security.

Jack was just who he was. No pretense, no games, just honesty. Not that Jack was always open about what he was thinking or planning, he wasn't. But his opinion of any given person was always plain for all to see. He would not be coming with Daniel if he didn't care. Unlike with everyone else, Daniel never had to wonder -not once- if Jack was really his friend. With Jack, that was never a mystery. You just knew, or he'd find a way to make sure you knew _exactly_ how he felt about you.

To the untrained eye, Daniel seemed actively defiant towards Jack's authority. He argued fiercely, and sometimes loudly. He was not a natural follower, and he especially didn't fit in well among military personnel. But there was an unspoken agreement between them. At the end of all things, when all that could be said was said, Daniel would follow Jack anywhere, no matter how dangerous or terrifying. For Jack, and virtually no one else, Daniel would condescend to play the good soldier when it counted. It was a privilege Jack had earned, and one he knew better than to abuse.

People listening with their ears would always and forever hear nothing but conflict between them, because the truth of who they were and how they thought of each other was spoken in their silences.

Jack led. And Daniel followed.

"Thanks, Jack," Daniel said softly.

Jack pretended not to have heard him and did not reply, but in his silence, Daniel heard his answer.


	15. Lightning Before the Storm

Jack didn't know James Chianti from Adam, but he did know Daniel. If he hadn't, he would've assumed that Daniel was letting old fears guide his actions, that packing a gun was overkill. But Daniel didn't have a look of abject panic, or cold vengeance. He had the look of the calmly logical, the one who knew he was about to come face-to-face with a killer, and had no intention of doing so unprepared.

Still, Jack was relieved when Daniel made the crack about blood on his carpet; it said the first thing on his mind was not death, that he would prefer another option. Jack wasn't so sure he himself felt that way. He didn't need details, the raw fear in Daniel's eyes whenever the subject of Chianti came up was enough. Jack knew that there wasn't much in this world or any other that really scared Daniel right to the core. Even when he did get scared, Daniel was damned good at masking it. All except for the eyes, which often betrayed his fear. But Chianti had set a stake of fear so deep in Daniel that it showed all over, in the widening of his eyes, the way his skin went pale, the way he'd start to shake before he could stop himself.

The source of that level of fear could be nothing less than evil, and Jack wanted it dead. He didn't care that this was no Goa'uld, no alien shape-shifter, no villainous clone. Human, Earthling, whatever, James Chianti was just as much a monster as the aliens Jack and his team faced all the time. Only unlike the vast majority of those things out in the galaxy, Chianti had his hooks deep in the psyche of a member of Jack's team. And that wasn't just evil, it was unsafe. Anyone with that tight a hold on Daniel inside could sooner or later get him killed, even if they weren't physically present at the time. This last mission was a small sampling of that. Daniel had been distracted right from the start, and it has slowed him down, rendered his judgment suspect, and gotten him hurt.

If Chianti could do that with a single phone call, Jack shuddered to think what the man had accomplished when he was supposedly Daniel's guardian.

What really bothered Jack was whether the Daniel that was riding shotgun now would be the one who walked through the front door of the apartment a few minutes from now. This Daniel was unafraid, calm, collected, and sure of what he was to do. But Jack knew resolve could crumble in the face of terror. If that deep fear in Daniel broke through, all bets were off.

Years of working with Daniel had taught Jack that the man was steady, reliable, and astonishingly graceful under pressure. But this was different from their usual. At least, it was different in Jack's mind. But he realized that, to Daniel, it might all be the same. After all, to Daniel, Sha're wasn't some girl from an alien world. Sha're was his guiding star, his beloved, his wife. For Daniel, Abydos had been home. He'd lived there with those people. It seemed that no world was truly alien to Daniel for long, no more strange to him than Earth itself. Perhaps in his mind, Chianti was just another enemy.

Jack couldn't feel that way. He'd fought on Earth, and he'd fought off it, and they weren't the same. Not to him. And fighting on home ground itself was yet another thing entirely. He couldn't see it as all one and the same. But maybe Daniel could. For his sake, Jack sure hoped so.

"So, Danny, is there anything else I need to know?" Jack asked.

Daniel had told him some about Chianti, but in a vague way, and certainly not hitting every detail that might be relevant if this guy was going to try and kill them. Instinct said to prepare to fight for his life. It wasn't just experience and training alive in Jack. Jack didn't entirely realize it, but his instincts were attuned to Daniel's. Because instinct bade Daniel assume the worst, Jack felt the sense of danger like the pressure in the air before a coming storm.

"He's been in prison a long time," Daniel said, "That may have changed him."

By his tone, and the look in his eyes as he spoke, Daniel was not implying the change had done him any good. Some people went to prison, were remorseful, and changed their ways. Others just dug in deeper, into the anger, into the hate, giving themselves over to a rabid mentality. Jack had seen it both ways. He'd even seen some people go in and come out just the same. Jack didn't get the sense that would be the case with this guy. Nursing a grudge for a lot of years did things to a person. A lust for vengeance had a way of draining the soul, until there was less humanity left than when a Goa'uld took on a host. Chianti must be getting old, Jack supposed. But he knew that the limitations of age also came with advantages. Patience, caution, experience. All these replaced the lightning reflexes, endurance and sheer strength of youth, and the man who had them in spades would beat youth every time.

But it was just one man, a single human who might or might not have a gun, might or might not know how to fight, might or might not have violence on his mind. Perhaps he thought Daniel would come cowering, like a frightened child. But if that was what he expected, he was in for a rude awakening, because Daniel was coming home like a once tame wolf whose former master has betrayed it.

Jack decided to keep his eyes (and his mind) on the road. After all, none of it would mean anything if they didn't get there in one piece. It crawled across his mind that they would have to climb a lot of stairs to get to the apartment, and he felt a twinge of dread at that.

Jack's knees were still complaining bitterly about the earlier running and jumping he'd made them do, and the suggestion of stairs in their near future sent them in paroxysms of spasming complaint. Disadvantages of a violently adventurous life and being well over the age of forty. The combination of age and repeated previous injury was hell on the joints.

Evidently Daniel wasn't feeling stiff. No sooner had Jack parked the truck by the curb then Daniel was out of it and headed for the stairs. At the base of them, he paused and looked back, waiting for Jack.

"You know," Daniel said when Jack reached him, sounding as if he might be hoping the colonel would opt to try and talk him out of going up the stairs, "Normal people call the cops when someone invades their home."

"Normal people don't spend a week being held captive by space monkeys," Jack replied without hesitation, "And they don't have a journals full of national secrets in alongside the cake recipes in their bookshelf."

"I don't have any cake recipes," Daniel pointed out.

"Yeah, well," Jack said, starting up the stairs, "A _normal_ person would."

Daniel stared after him for a moment, then followed wordlessly.

In truth, neither Jack nor Daniel were much for figures of authority such as the police represented. More, getting the police involved would mean having to dance around questions they weren't able or allowed to answer. Of course there were measures and resources in place to make sure any legal entanglements were quickly slipped, but it was always better to go unnoticed than to leave people with a mystery. Gunshots would attract attention, and Jack supposed they could have told someone where they were going and why, but that might take too long. Not only might Chianti have gone by the time they got it through all the proper channels, but Daniel's nerve might have gone too.

Not only that, but there would be more questions than Jack had asked. More prying into a part of Daniel's past that hurt him, and for no reason except to satisfy governmental curiosity. Better to ask forgiveness after than permission before. Besides which, once it was done, there would be a rush to cover it up before the press got wind of it. The other way around, the process would be slow and rife with red tape. Government run operations always had pencil pushers at the top, determined to drown the world in paperwork. Waste of time, as far as Jack was concerned.

Jack was the kind of man who preferred to just solve a problem rather than discuss and argue over the right way to do it. Fortunately for him, he was good enough at what he did that he could get away with it. Being called from retirement for the Stargate Program gave him a certain status of which he was very much aware. They _needed_ him. And they needed Daniel too.

More importantly, there was no reason anybody would ever have to know that Jack and Daniel had been aware in advance that there would be someone in that apartment. There was nothing unusual or suspicious about them both being in Daniel's apartment, or their both being armed. And there would be little inquiry as to why they had shot an intruder if it came to that.

When they reached the apartment, they saw at once that the door was ajar.

Daniel paused, glancing at Jack. Then he took a steadying breath and nudged the door open. Jack moved to the wall beside the door, going for cover under the assumption that anything might be lying in wait on the other side. The action wasn't planned, just years of training and experience forming an instinct as strong as breathing. Daniel moved through the door and into his house. Then he paused again. Jack had started to follow him, but was stopped when Daniel blocked his path. Unsure what Daniel was thinking now, or if maybe his nerve might be slipping, Jack waited in silence.

Daniel turned slightly, making sure Jack could see when he removed his glasses.

Jack knew the action plunged the world into blurry shapes that sort of melted into one another indistinctly, as Daniel had described it once. But Jack knew that, despite his miserable vision, Daniel was still able to locate and hit center mass on a shooting range even without his glasses. Daniel had clearly never forgotten Jack's remark about glasses looking like weakness, so he had purposely practiced both shooting and running obstacle courses without them. It was probably hell, but he could do it. Practically blind, but knowing he externally looked more confident without his glasses on, Daniel continued into the apartment.

Daniel was a strange man.

Jack had thought that from the first moment they met. There was just something about how he was wired that wasn't like other people. Here he was, scared to death of the man in his apartment, and yet he now put himself at what Jack considered to be a critical disadvantage by removing his ability to see properly. If they hadn't already been in the apartment, Jack would have asked him what the hell he thought he was doing. Thing was, Jack actually knew perfectly well what Daniel was doing. He was going to try and present himself in a position of power or authority, pretending to be confident. And, weirdest of all, he was going to try and resolve this situation without bloodshed.

A line from an old western that Jack had taken very much to heart came suddenly to mind: 'I do not need weapons to fight men who make war on children'.

Jack didn't expect that things would be going Daniel's way, and he strongly suspected he would have to take over to cover for Daniel, who seemed to be planning on using all of the courage he had at once, saving nothing for a more extended encounter. That was Daniel's way. He always threw himself whole-heartedly into everything he undertook, leaving himself no safety line and no easy way out once he was in. His method of moving forward always seemed to be to shut off his way to go back.

For his part, Jack really preferred to have a way out.

Again, Daniel halted so abruptly that Jack almost ran into him. Jack looked over Daniel's shoulder at the man he realized was sprawled on Daniel's couch. James Chianti was smaller than Jack had expected, and nowhere near as scary looking as Jack would've assumed. In fact, he looked really quite ordinary, with a forgettable sort of face and uninteresting haircut for his black hair, which was thoroughly graying. He was also, as it happened, wearing rather large, round glasses.

Jack's first thought was that maybe Daniel had been a little overly paranoid after all. Then he reminded himself how feeble Daniel had looked when they first met, with the glasses and the sneezing and the tripping over stuff and getting tangled up in things. And yet, though he'd lacked the wisdom to realize it at the time, Jack knew that even then Daniel was a little like a force of nature, he just sort of happened to you, and there was no stopping him when he decided on a course.

If this seemingly unimposing, bespectacled man was anything like him, small and harmless as he looked, there might be blood on Daniel's carpet yet.

With a slight twitch, as if turning on a power switch, Daniel moved forward. As he went down the stairs into the living room with deceptively easy movements, Daniel kept his eyes on what to him was probably nothing but a dark shape blending in with his couch. Chianti straightened slightly, but didn't get up. Jack hung back, seeing as Chianti had not noticed him yet.

But he found it hard to focus on Chianti because of what Daniel was doing.

Jack had seen Daniel do many imitations in attempts to communicate with peoples on other worlds who used languages he did not know. Daniel had been known to do impressions of chickens, airplanes and any other number of strange things to try and get his point across. Now he proceeded to do an impression of something far more elaborate and intimidating than barnyard fowl. Jack recognized the cadence of speech instantly, even though it had been years. Daniel was doing an impression of Ra, as he had sounded when he found the team from Earth had invaded Abydos.

In part, all Goa'uld bore resemblance to Ra. They were supremely confident to the point of being beyond arrogant, calm and relaxed in the presence of foes they saw as lesser beings. All Goa'uld had a fluid grace to their movements, but there was a particularly feline quality to the way Ra moved that marked him even among the Goa'uld as something _other_.

The shift in Daniel's way of moving and speaking momentarily alarmed Jack, his mind flashing back to Daniel's brief descent into a Goa'uld-like madness brought on by using the sarcophagus too often. Though it was not realistic, Jack had an instant's fear that Daniel could have somehow suffered a relapse. His performance was that perfect. Jack had to give the man credit, he could play the king as well as he could portray the slave, behave as both sinner and saint. While he probably could not fill the role of a thug, there was little else beyond his grasp. The fear had to be killing him, in fact Jack had seen it was doing just that, but the only thing he showed was a cool, almost indifferent anger towards the man who had broken into his home, invaded his life, and taken control of his present. For the first time, Jack wondered if Ra had been frightened when he was confronted by the Earthlings. Was it possible the outward calm was only an act?

"Shouldn't you be wasting away in a prison somewhere?" Daniel asked.

"You're a hard man to find, Danny," Chianti said, not rising from the couch.

Daniel's eyes narrowed slightly, bristling at the use of the familiar term that Daniel's parents had used when addressing him, and which Jack occasionally -without conscious intent- lapsed into calling him.

"You're avoiding the question," Daniel said, and his acidic, yet still somehow serene tone conveyed a second message of 'Don't call me that.'

"I'm out on good behavior," Chianti told him.

"I doubt that," Daniel responded, the quiet anger under his level tone reflected in his shuttered eyes.

Daniel had come to a stop in the living room. He stood looking down at Chianti, a cluttered coffee table between them. Jack recognized the object on top of the piles on the coffee table as Daniel's journal for Abydos. It was lying open and face down, and Jack knew seeing it must be driving Daniel up the wall, but the younger man gave no outward sign of even being aware of it.

After staring at Chianti for a moment, Daniel moved away, not back towards Jack, but the other side of the living room, where the large windows looked out on the street. Darkness was falling outside, but Chianti had turned on several lights in the apartment and so the effect of the setting sun was minimal. Jack, still an observer to this drama, wondered just what Daniel's game was.

Chianti had to crane his neck awkwardly to see Daniel, or else sit up. He chose the latter. Daniel, his back to Chianti, tilted his head slightly, looking at something above him. Jack couldn't see from his angle, but he guessed it was the wasp's nest which had been so fascinating to him before the mission.

"You came here for a reason," Daniel said, still looking at the nest, ignoring everything behind him.

Chianti was silent for several seconds, then finally said, "You've changed."

"What was it you expected to find here?" Daniel turned his head slightly, seeming to gaze at Chianti out of his peripheral vision Jack knew he didn't have, and continued in placid tones with just the barest edge of icy anger revealed beneath them, "Did you expect to find the boy you terrorized? A fragile shell of a person you could shatter with your presence? A child in a man's body, still afraid of the monsters that hide in the dark?" Daniel smirked slightly, then returned to looking at the wasp's nest, "Do you really believe you have that kind of power?"

The mannerisms were horrifically familiar, and wrong on Daniel, and Jack half-wanted to yell at him to stop it. But even if it hadn't been for Chianti's continued unawareness of him, Jack would still have held his tongue, morbidly fascinated by Daniel's performance. It had never occurred to him that Daniel might be a fine actor in addition to everything else, and he had the unsettling premonition that this would not be the last time Daniel would put his life on the line using this talent of his.

"I've thought about you a lot the last few years," Chianti ventured, clearly knocked off-balance by Daniel's behavior, "Every day, in fact."

"Funny," Daniel offered a flat, almost derisive laugh, his eyes again settling but not really settling on Chianti, "I haven't thought of you at all."

James Chianti looked at Daniel for a long, silent moment. During that time, Daniel didn't move, sensing he was being appraised. He remained fixed, pretending he could see Chianti perfectly, as if he were a cat watching a rodent, pretending not to see it until the prey wandered close enough for an easy kill. It was hard to think of Daniel as predatory, considering how well Jack knew him, but he actually looked pretty damned convincing.

Without wanting to, Jack half-wondered if the Daniel he thought he knew was the real one after all. He shook the thought off almost as soon as it surfaced. Daniel might be able to maintain a facade for a little while, but years of fighting side-by-side, escaping death by the skin of their teeth on nothing but determination and luck... you couldn't fake that. You couldn't pretend that. Jack _knew_ Daniel. And because of that he knew his friend's nerve nearly failed him when Chianti got up and moved toward him. He saw Daniel's weight shift back, just for a split-second, as the instinct of fight or flight tried to assert itself, but Daniel caught it and swallowed it without breaking character. Had it not been so serious, watching the dark storm clouds of emotion gather in Daniel's sky colored eyes would have been funny.

Daniel watched Chianti approach as a bull might watch a lion, with distinct unease, yet a perfect awareness that he could kill the advancing predator at any moment.

Now he was standing close to Daniel, it was evident that Chianti was much shorter than Daniel was. James Chianti was a little wiry man and looked almost like a stick figure in his baggy clothing. Daniel, on the other hand, had developed very noticeable muscles by the regular physical training that was a required part of his job. Even though he was very physically fit and six feet tall, Daniel had a way of downplaying his height and musculature and generally looked very small standing next to almost anyone. But just now he was playing a creature out of myth, larger than life, and radiating power. He was much bigger than Chianti, assuredly much stronger.

Jack didn't know if either Daniel or Chianti was aware of it, because both seemed to be stuck in the past, locked in a moment in time when Daniel was the small one, the weak one. Could either of them see how different Daniel was now? Jack himself hadn't noticed how much Daniel had changed in just a few short years from the wimpy archeologist with the hay-fever and big glasses to the warrior he'd had to become in order to fight the Goa'uld. Daniel's original motivation had been to get his wife back, and Jack had feared he would leave SG-1 when she was killed. Instead he remained, seeming more stoically determined than ever to rid the galaxy of the System Lords for good.

Jack wasn't sure what drove Daniel now. It wasn't the desire for revenge, he knew that much. Anger like that would burn Daniel up from the inside, tear him apart and destroy him. But Daniel wasn't self-destructing. He wasn't out of control or out of his mind. One of those strangely wired parts of him was somehow able to cope with the devastating loss of Sha're, allowing him to hold himself together. Whatever piece that was held him together now.

Daniel turned to face Chianti more fully, in a way that made Jack almost expect to see his eyes glow. Of course they didn't, the flash in them wasn't light, it was anger. But that was just as visible to Chianti.

"You _are_ different," Chianti observed, then seemed to notice Jack for the first time, "And who the hell is he?"

Daniel's glance fell on Jack, but he didn't immediately answer, so Jack decided to do it himself.

"I'm the maid," Jack replied, then took in the typical messiness of Daniel's abode and added, "It's my day off."

"Whatever you came here for," Daniel said, returning Chianti's attention to himself, his voice ice and expression stony but for the dark flashes of emotional lightning in his eyes, "forget it, and get out."

For a moment Chianti didn't move, as if he was not convinced of Daniel's sincerity. Suddenly the phone rang, making them all jump in surprise. Jack didn't realize it for a few minutes, but that phone call was the sound of the storm breaking.

Daniel locked eyes with Jack for a moment, and then brushed past Chianti as if he wasn't there. Chianti started to follow Daniel to the dining room where the phone was, but Jack stepped firmly into his path without a word. The death stare he leveled at the smaller man halted Chianti in his tracks.

Despite the fact that this was his home and so the caller probably knew who he was, Daniel identified himself by name when he answered the phone. Jack was too far away, and paying too much attention to Chianti, to hear the other side of the conversation, but it was almost immediately apparent that Daniel was speaking with someone at the SGC, probably someone relaying a message from Carter or Hammond by the sound of Daniel's side of the conversation.

"That seems bad," Daniel said after listening for a moment, and there followed a pause after which he responded with a cryptic, "Just one," and then another pause which ended with, "That's a terrible idea," and another pause, a sigh and, "We're on our way."

Daniel hung up, and Jack glanced over his shoulder. Daniel had his back to Jack, but his bearing suggested that the news at the other end of the line was the bad kind. After a moment, Daniel reached into the pocket where he'd put his glasses, took them out and put them on before turning around.

No longer was he playing Ra, and no longer was he soft-voiced as he'd been on the phone. Now he was the Daniel that Jack had seen a few times in the field, bold and determined, and knowing exactly what he meant to do. This was the Daniel that had boarded and blown up a Ha'tak along with the rest of SG-1. This was the Daniel that lurked beneath the surface, the only one Jack ever addressed, because it was the one which was real, while everything else was just a screen, a method of self defense.

Chianti seemed to sense the shift as well.

"Daniel?" Jack inquired, but Daniel ignored him for the moment because Chianti was edging away.

Chianti didn't appear confident anymore. He didn't like the way Daniel's moods shifted. And he didn't like the friend Daniel had brought with him. He didn't have power here, and he didn't like it.

But he wasn't given any time to react before Daniel brought out the M9 and leveled it at his head. Jack understood now why Daniel had put his glasses back on. Without them, he would have been forced to simply aim for center mass and hope he was right. With his glasses, Daniel could probably shoot a quarter at a hundred yards, or some other other impressive figure. In any case, he could not miss Chianti from across the room.

" _Don't_ make me clean my rug," Daniel threatened, but Jack noted his finger was on the trigger guard.

Chianti stared at Daniel, his face going sheet-white. Anger and an end to patience blazed in Daniel's eyes as he stared back. It was obvious from Chianti's shocked expression that he had not anticipated Daniel being armed. Jack was now fairly certain Chianti hadn't found Daniel's M9 in the closet, otherwise he wouldn't have looked quite that surprised.

" _Get out_ of my apartment," Daniel repeated.

This time Chianti obeyed.


	16. Truth

"You think that was wise?" Jack asked with a raised eyebrow.

Daniel felt like he was on the verge of throwing up. The fear singing in his veins had made him dizzy before the phone call, and what he'd heard on the other end of the line had brought that to a screeching crescendo that had generated an intense buzzing in his head. Breathing evenly to keep himself from shaking, Daniel holstered his weapon as Jack went on.

Jack continued, "He could come back. Besides, with what he knows-"

Daniel cut him off, "Nobody would believe him. Nobody ever believed _me_. Besides, we haven't got time for him now. We need to get back to the SGC. Give me your keys."

Jack cocked his head and asked suspiciously, "Why?"

"Jack, Sam's sick," Daniel answered, "Dr. Fraser thinks it was something she ate. Something you ate."

"What about you?" Jack wanted to know.

Daniel shook his head, "Maybe, but not likely. But just... give me your keys and let's go," seeing Jack still hesitating, Daniel persisted, "Look, I'd rather not have to carry you down the stairs."

With obvious reluctance, Jack tossed Daniel the keys to his truck. He didn't look particularly sick to Daniel, but apparently it had hit Sam pretty suddenly, and he preferred not to take the chance. He didn't know how Dr. Fraser had zeroed in on a specific class of the fruits they'd eaten, maybe it was just hope on her part, but he had to act on the information he'd been given, which was that the suspected fruit was one of the several he hadn't been able to stomach due to allergies.

As they left the apartment, Jack paused and said, "Keys."

Daniel felt around in his pockets, found the keys for his apartment and locked the door behind him.

"Happy?" Daniel asked.

"Delighted," Jack replied, and led the way down the stairs.

Jack continued to look okay most of the way down the stairs. Then, without warning, he suddenly went gray and started to collapse. Daniel caught him on the way down, bracing himself sufficiently that they didn't fall the rest of the way down the stairs together. The stairs were too awkwardly designed for Daniel to actually pick Jack up and carry him, but he managed to drag Jack down the stairs and maneuvered the older man into the passenger seat of Jack's truck.

"She wasn't kidding about sudden onset," Jack mumbled quietly.

Daniel was partway through buckling him in, and the comment made him pause for half a tick, then he finished snapping the seat belt into place.

"Hang in there, Jack," he said, backing out of the cab to shut the passenger door and go around the other side.

"If you ding my truck, I'll have to kill you," Jack managed weakly when Daniel got in the driver's side.

"Wouldn't be the first time I've died," Daniel replied, starting the engine.

"No," Jack agreed with a slight chuckle, "No it wouldn't."

Despite his attempt at levity, Jack really didn't look good, and didn't appear to have the energy to actually move. Daniel was a long way from being a medic, but he did know enough to guess that it probably wasn't the fruit itself, but some kind of contaminant. Possibly something introduced that interacted only with some of the fruit. Something that took some time to incubate, or possibly something that the human immune system could fend off a few times until it was weak enough to succumb to it. Either way, Daniel suspected there wasn't a lot of time.

As he pulled out, Daniel realized he'd never driven Jack's truck before. In fact, trucks weren't really his thing at all. It moved a lot differently than his little car. Still, he'd recently made handling dangerous machinery he knew absolutely nothing about a part of his career, a pickup truck was no match for him.

There was of course no point in calling a hospital, since this was bound to be some kind of virus or something the likes of which no Earth doctor had seen or knew how to cope with, and the SGC didn't actually have an ambulance on call strangely enough. Typically people came in sick through the Stargate, and there was no need to deliver them to the SGC because they were already there. Under the circumstances, Daniel was the fastest -and safest- option.

Even though his instinct was to screw the speed limit and the stop lights, Daniel knew that getting stopped by the cops would eliminate any time advantage he might gain from that, and of course an accident would be even worse, so he did obey the rules of the road... mostly. But it wasn't long before he was on that practically deserted stretch on the way to the base where almost nobody drove unless they too were on their way to the SGC. At that point, he dropped any pretense of being a law-abiding citizen. By then, Jack had ceased to be responsive, and Daniel got the sense that a clock was ticking, and time was short.

The guards at the gate had been told he was coming in. They not only knew Jack's truck, they had personally seen it drive out just a short while ago, and so they made no pretense of checking IDs, simply waved Daniel through. Fortunately, Daniel didn't have to get any further than parking the truck, because Dr. Fraser had a team to meet him there.

He'd barely shifted the truck into park when Janet Fraser was up in it, checking Jack's vitals, talking to him and recognizing there was no response, then backing out to let her orderlies haul Jack out and put him on the gurney they'd brought with them. In the meantime, Daniel got out of the truck and came around the side, at which point Janet intercepted him.

"How are you?" She asked.

"I'm fine," Daniel answered.

His insides were churning, but that wasn't illness, it was fear. Apparently Janet could tell the difference at a glance, because she seemed to believe him and didn't pressure him about it. She didn't have to ask him to come with her though. He was worried enough about his team mates that he followed the medical staff as closely as if he'd been leashed to them.

On the elevator ride, Janet asked Daniel a series of questions concerning what he knew about the fruit the team had eaten off-world. Daniel's recollections were surprisingly sketchy, he really hadn't been paying a lot of attention to the fruit at the time.

When she paused in her questioning long enough, Daniel asked, "Are they going to be alright?"

"I don't know," Janet answered, "It would really help if I had a sample of whatever it was that caused this. As is, anything I come up with will be a shot in the dark."

Janet was very good at those, and Daniel didn't doubt for a second that if anyone had the ability to solve this the hard way, it would be her. After all, she'd somehow not only ruled out any casually acquired diseases, but also seemed to have dismissed the possibility of infected bugs transmitting something via bite (and, considering the number of bug bites they'd gotten, that seemed a reasonable suspect), all in just a short while. Daniel didn't question how she'd done it, or how sure she was.

"You'll get your samples," Daniel promised when they reached the infirmary.

"Do I want to know how you're going to accomplish that?" she asked.

"Probably not," Daniel answered honestly.

Janet looked at him for a long moment. As chief of the medical staff at the SGC, she knew him well. As his doctor, she knew him even better. They weren't close friends like she and Sam had become, but they knew each other enough. As Daniel trusted the good doctor to do her job, she trusted him to do his.

"Be careful," was her only advice.

Daniel nodded, looked around and spotted Teal'c. He didn't have to say anything to the tall Jaffa. Their eyes met, and Teal'c understood what they were going to do without a word. Silently, he inclined his head. Daniel turned and left the infirmary, knowing without looking that Teal'c was following him.

Deciding to take a page out of Jack's book, Daniel skipped looking for permission. Making only one stop in his office for an unlined notebook and pencil, Daniel went almost straight to the holding cell where the howlers were. The airman watching the door took one look at Teal'c and immediately moved out of the way without any protest. Teal'c had that effect on people.

The ragged little pack of howlers which were looking increasingly nervous jumped at Daniel's abrupt entrance, and again when he dropped his notebook on the table in the center of the room.

Picking the one Jack had called Leroy out of the group, Daniel said, "We need to have a talk."

* * *

Less than thirty minutes later, while Daniel and Teal'c were gearing up, CMSgt. Walter Harriman located them.

"General Hammond wants to speak with you," Walter said, addressing himself to Daniel, but acknowledging Teal'c's presence with a respectful look.

"Tell him that I'm going," Daniel said, in the process of lacing up one of his boots, the one he kept his boot knife tucked into.

Walter, always with a good instinct for plucking context out of the air, replied, "You don't have to go, you know. There are other teams."

"None of them have the knowledge that I have," Daniel replied shortly, "And General Hammond knows it."

"Don't you think you should at least get his permission first?" poor Sgt. Harriman, always tied firmly to the chain of command, often had trouble understanding the true nature of SG-1.

SG-1 operated under SGC law only superficially. When it came to the tough calls and saving the world, it wasn't unusual for them to not only buck orders, but actively ignore them. Hammond let them get away with it because he knew them, trusted their abilities, and wasn't the pompous ass he often pretended to be in front of his superiors. Normally, Daniel would have done the courtesy of talking to him, making a show of respect for his authority, not only for the benefit of Hammond's superiors later, but also because he respected the General himself, as respected few uniforms. But he felt that clock in his head ticking away, and sensed neither Jack nor Sam had time for him to go through formalities.

"Why don't you get his permission and give it to me in the Gate Room?" Daniel replied.

Walter opened his mouth to argue, but then closed it. He was not an argumentative man by nature, and even his loyalty to the uniform wasn't enough to convince him it would be worth the effort of arguing with Daniel. In fact, only strangers, fools and Jack himself would make the effort to have an argument with Daniel once he was firmly decided on something. Walter was no stranger to Daniel, nor was he a fool. And he certainly wasn't Jack O'Neill. So he simply went away without another word.

"You ready for this?" Daniel asked Teal'c.

"I am," Teal'c replied, and together they headed for the Gate Room.

In the Gate Room, they found General Hammond had not only granted them permission to go, but was sending two teams, SGs 3 and 5, as backup and support. Between them they had the howlers which had been retrieved from their cell while Daniel and Teal'c were gearing up, suggesting both teams had been called in and told to gear up around the same time Daniel had received the phone call at his apartment. As if General Hammond had foreseen this, and made the decision as to how he would react to Daniel's actions before Daniel had ever known he would be performing those actions.

There had been a time when the teams might've objected to following the lead of an archeologist and an alien, but that time was long since passed, and the only thing that happened when Daniel and Teal'c walked in was the team leaders gave them respectful nods and fell in behind them.

The Stargate was already in motion, but Daniel paused at the base of the ramp and looked back.

"You have a go," the voice of General Hammond himself came over the PA system.

"Thank you, General," Daniel said genuinely, under the sound of Walter announcing the locking of each chevron in its turn.

The howlers yelped and flattened against each other as the 'Gate activated, but there was nowhere for them to go and they knew it. They also knew -but perhaps didn't fully believe- that they were going home. Daniel had told them that, it had been part of their original conversation that the howlers would be returned home, and the most recent discussion in the cell had reaffirmed that.

"Give us a five count," Daniel told the SG-team leaders, "Then let the howlers go. You follow."

There were no objections, so Daniel took a breath and closed his eyes for a moment as he turned towards the Stargate. He glanced at Teal'c beside him, gathering courage from the Jaffa's steady calm. And then he started up the ramp, Teal'c right with him all the way. They went through together.

His strategy was simple, and based on the understanding of the howlers he'd gained. He and Teal'c were both the distraction and the declaration that the people of Earth were not afraid of the howlers, and that -unlike Scar- Daniel didn't need a pack of body guards to precede him. The howlers to follow were a peace offering. Lastly would come the firepower, and any violence that came from them would be a statement that making enemies of Earth would be a deadly mistake. Daniel was done playing. It was time Scar -and by extension all the other howlers- took him seriously. Time they understood the fire they'd been toying with.

On the other side of the Stargate, the rain had stopped and the sky had cleared. Daniel wasn't surprised to see howlers sitting in the trees near the Stargate. He was not surprised to hear their roaring fill the air, warning the rest of the pack, and perhaps requesting backup. Daniel and Teal'c stepped clear of the Stargate.

When a howler leaped down from its tree and came charging, Daniel pulled out his M9 and shot directly in the monkey's path. The bullet sliced into the ground, kicking up chunks of mud. With a startled yelp, the howler broke off its charge and went back to the trees.

The five count was up, so the half dozen howlers that had dared follow the team through the Stargate now returned to their home. They had clearly stepped through under protest, their nerve failing them at the last moment. For an instant, they stood still as statues, looking around, taking in the landscape, seeing it was familiar, perhaps even recognizing the faces of friends and family in the trees. They took off for the trees, and neither Daniel nor Teal'c moved to stop them.

SGs 3 and 5 followed, taking defensive positions around the Stargate. The howlers in the trees shouted and jeered, but none dared rush forward. When they finally quieted down, Daniel knelt in the grass to wait, his M9 still out of its holster. Teal'c stood next to him, still and solid as stone. SG-3 and SG-5 settled in to wait, following Daniel's lead even though they didn't know what he was doing.

Ten minutes later, either boredom or curiosity got the better of one of them.

"Uh, how long are we going to sit here, Dr. Jackson?" Col. Makepeace asked.

"As long as we have to, Colonel," Daniel replied neutrally, knowing his calm tone and cryptic words would irritate the marine more than anything, and secretly enjoying that.

Daniel didn't get along well with marines, even ones he liked.

"You're not gonna try to catch flies with chopsticks now, are you?" Makepeace inquired.

"Sorry," Daniel replied with a trace of a smile, "Left those in my other pants."

Seconds crawled into minutes, into half an hour, into forty-five minutes, into an hour, into over an hour.

Finally, the telltale shrieking and shaking of branches told Daniel that Scar was coming. He stood up, signaling the teams to hold positions with a wave of his hand. Their support was more than welcome, however their interference would not be. Howlers flooded out of the shadows, but instead of moving into the open, they flowed along the treeline, reluctant to leave its cover. The SG-teams tensed, weapons at the ready. Daniel, on the other hand, holstered his pistol. He did not instruct any of the others to do the same.

But he did say, "If Scar comes this way, let him. Stop any other monkey in their tracks, but don't hurt them if you can avoid it. A shot into the ground should do it."

"And if it doesn't?" Makepeace asked, low-voiced.

"Do what you have to," Daniel advised, "But don't make my job harder than it has to be."

Eventually, the howlers fell silent, and Scar emerged from the trees. There was no sign of Ginger, but in truth that didn't surprise Daniel because he suspected she was actually Scar's mate, which was why she had been kept back until Scar was assured of SG-1's helplessness. Now he again kept her away.

Scar looked smaller than Daniel remembered, and he moved with unaccustomed meekness. Apparently what his howlers had told him on their return had frightened him. Daniel had planned that too. He didn't have to make up any stories about the SGC and Earth; the truth was sufficient.

In fact, it was apparently more than sufficient. Several yards away from Daniel, Scar stopped suddenly. Apparently this was a signal for some other howlers to start forward. Daniel held up a hand to counter his last instructions to the SG-teams when he saw what they had with them. The howlers were bringing a peace offering of their own, bringing forward all of the gear they'd taken from SG-1, most of it more or less intact. The howlers took it only as close as where Scar waited, and then scampered back to cover. Scar waited, and Daniel understood.

"Wait here," Daniel said, and waited for no acknowledgment before he stepped forward.

When he reached Scar, he waited for the howler to sit before doing so himself. Daniel had shed the submissive persona he'd shouldered last time he was here, but he did not reach into his memory for the nature of the Goa'uld. What was needed now was just him, as he was, no pretense, only truth.

And the truth was that Daniel didn't hate the howlers, not even Scar. He didn't bear them any ill-will. He knew much of their behavior came from inexperience dealing with aliens, possibly even any groups outside their own; the rest was an impish sense of curiosity and childish temper. He couldn't hold that against them. They weren't evil really, just boisterous and self-absorbed. The truth was that the first Earthlings sent out to see aliens had been sent with the intention of wiping those aliens out. _That_ was the original Abydos mission. The one Daniel had -with Jack's help- thwarted, in the process destroying Ra, freeing the Abydonian people, and unintentionally kicking off a war with the Goa'uld. Their record with aliens was hardly without blemish.

But while he wanted Scar to understand that they didn't have to be enemies, it was more vital that Scar understand that Daniel's friends -his family- were in trouble, and that he was willing to do _anything_ to save them, and it was up to Scar to determine just what that anything would prove to be.

Keenly aware of the time ticking away, Daniel wanted to just demand fruit and be done with it. But he unhappily realized that he still had to lay a foundation with Scar. They _had_ to reach an understanding.

"Let me tell you a story," Daniel began, "about a race called the Goa'uld."

With that, he got out his notebook and began to write.

* * *

"Make sure those get to the infirmary," Daniel said to Teal'c when they returned to the SGC, handing off the basket of fruit they'd gotten from the howlers.

Unspoken though it might have been, Daniel was officially the leader of this latest expedition. Ideally all members of teams sent out would come in for debriefings, but often those lower ranked on the mission would be allowed to come in late, or be excused entirely when the teams brought something extra back. In this case, a basket of fruit. In the meantime, Daniel and the rest of the SG-teams would be going to the briefing room where they would make their report to General Hammond.

Because this had been Daniel's mission, he carried most of the responsibility not only for anything that had happened, but reporting it in detail to General Hammond. Daniel had more than once come to explain an idea, a theory, or a discovery, but even when he was temporarily attached to other teams he was not their leader. Even so, it was not the first time he'd led a debriefing.

The teams assembled in the briefing room, and waited for General Hammond. They didn't have to wait more than a few minutes before the General came out and assumed his customary position.

"Good to have you back," he opened, initiating a fairly relaxed debrief.

General Hammond seldom demanded formality. Near-retirement, and comfortably confident that his people respected him without needing to be hard-ridden to do so, General Hammond was perhaps the only authority figure that either Jack or Daniel truly liked, certainly the only one that had the respect of the both of them. He had their respect because he knew how to step back and let them do their jobs, and because he knew when to throw the weight of his rank and position around. He was their commander, but he was also their supporter when they were in the field, and their staunch defender against the rancid claws of the governmental types who would seek to shut them down, or even do them harm. He was the ultimate voice of authority they answered to, but he was likewise their champion in times of political upheaval.

"Good to be back, sir," Daniel replied, even though in his case the 'sir' was unnecessary.

"How'd it go?" Hammond asked, his curiosity getting in the way of his usual patience.

"Well," Daniel answered, "I think it went... well."

Teal'c entered and took his seat beside Daniel without a word. There was no need to apologize for tardiness; everyone was well aware of where he'd been and what he'd been doing.

"How are Colonel O'Neill and Major Carter?" Hammond asked, and Daniel was immeasurably grateful to him for it.

Daniel of course had had no news of Jack or Sam since before he'd left, and it had taken pretty much all of his self-control to make himself come here instead of going to the infirmary first. He knew also that it was his place here and now to continue his report to General Hammond uninterrupted. But he wasn't sure he could've managed to do that. General Hammond was kind enough not to force him to find out.

"Dr. Fraser reports that their condition is stable for the moment. She says she is optimistic that the plant matter we brought back will aid her in her diagnosis and development of a cure."

"That's good," Hammond said.

He didn't prompt Daniel to continue from where he'd left off. He didn't have to. Daniel launched immediately into a recap of what had happened, skimming over the finer details of what he'd said to Scar and how he'd said it, not to withhold information, but because he would include it later in a written mission report. The General liked briefings and debriefings to be... well... brief. Everyone appreciated the saved time, and the spared stress that lengthy meetings caused.

When Daniel came to a natural break, Hammond asked, "Are they interested in trade negotiations?"

Daniel was reminded again how much he liked General Hammond. The man knew that sometimes relationships started off on the wrong foot. And he knew the value of the historical knowledge Daniel was always keen to acquire. Almost anyone else would have shut down the very idea before it was proposed, citing SG-1's capture, injuries suffered and subsequent illness at the hands of the howlers. But General Hammond wasn't so closed-minded. He had many years of military service, and -up until the Stargate- he'd basically seen it all. And too, he was something of a historian himself, albeit his interest was primarily in recent (which to Daniel meant less than a few thousand years ago) -specifically military- history. Hammond knew as well as Daniel that sometimes there was violence, potentially a lot of it, before an alliance was forged.

"I think maybe they are," Daniel answered, then sighed, "But we have a long way to go."

He didn't say so, but he knew his part in it was nearing its conclusion. There were teams whose job it was to continue dialogue and establish negotiations. SG-1 typically had a different purpose. If Daniel had the spare time, he always helped out with diplomatic and trade missions, but often he didn't have the luxury. Likely he would provide introductions -and a foundational course in the language- for a team devoted to diplomacy, and then he would be recalled to resume his duties as a member of SG-1. He didn't mind.

For some reason, the mysteries of the howlers no longer plagued him. He realized now that while the information that might be found in their history could be crucial, it could just as easily be nothing. It wasn't worth obsessing over.

Not right now.

* * *

As the debriefing had drawn to a conclusion, Daniel became keenly aware of how tired he was.

Checking in with Janet and finding that Jack and Sam's condition was unchanged but Janet's optimism in their prognosis was likewise the same, Daniel also extended his thanks to her for not trying to stop him from going on the mission, to which she replied, "Could I have stopped you?"

Dr. Fraser was a tiny woman, but she carried the full weight of her medical degree and her seniority without difficulty. Many was the time the stern click of her heels as she walked had foretold the sudden demise of some ill-conceived venture, as she pulled medical rank and forbade an excursion. She was not to be trifled with and, even if someone managed not to like her, they still wouldn't dare cross her. However, force of nature though she might be, going up against Daniel -who at times resisted even _her_ authority- was sometimes a contest of the irresistible force and immovable object, requiring a third party (usually Jack, but sometimes Hammond or even Teal'c or Sam) to break up the stalemate.

In truth, Daniel didn't know the answer to the question, and said as much. Janet's only response was a small, knowing smile.

Daniel next went in search of an airman going off duty who could drop him off at home. Jack would snag any airman, any time, anywhere, for anything he pleased, but Daniel preferred not to inconvenience the people he worked with when he could avoid it. He did enough ruffling feathers and harassing people just doing his job.

He wrangled a young tech, whom he discovered to his discomfort was in awe of most of the teams that ventured off-world, but most particularly any member of SG-1. He endured the man's unabashed hero worship in virtual silence, too tired by now to do anything else. In fact, he must have fallen asleep at some point because he was startled awake by the sound of the tech shifting his vehicle into park. He thanked the young man for the ride, pleaded exhaustion and shuffled off toward his apartment.

The exhaustion wasn't a lie, Daniel was bone-weary, the kind of weary that comes from expending every ounce of physical and mental stamina you have, facing not only terror, but the demand to think of solutions on the fly in life or death situations. The weariness always hit Daniel after a mission, and he was ever grateful for the SGC's work scheduling, which reminded him of how firemen worked. Missions were extremely and unpredictably taxing, so there was always time off at the end of a mission unless some sort of crisis prevented it. Of course, people like Daniel and Sam often came in even when they didn't have to, ruthlessly pursued by their inner demons, which bade them never leave a project unfinished, even though there was _always_ another project waiting in the wings.

So it was that Daniel wasn't terribly alert when he reached his front door, and he'd already walked through it before he remembered that he had locked it when he left. In that same instant, all hell broke loose, beginning with the sound of a bullet being launched from the barrel of a gun.


	17. Messages from Angels

_Life_ , Jack thought hazily as he regained consciousness, _is like an onion: if you squirt its juice in your eye, it stings._

Deciding that was pretty good, he decided to pocket that one to say to someone later, if only to annoy and confuse them. He almost laughed aloud at that thought, then realized he really didn't feel well enough to laugh yet.

Well enough? Had he been sick?

Then it came back to him in a rush, and he opened his eyes to see the reassuringly familiar, if dull grayish ceiling of the infirmary in the SGC. Equally reassuring and familiar was the sound of Doc Fraser's heels clicking on the concrete, and Jack thought with amusement of all those movies where a fake nurse was revealed because she was wearing heels. Maybe that was revealing elsewhere either because of the demand for hospital approved shoes, or perhaps footwear that was comfortable to wear standing up for long hours, but Dr. Fraser must not believe in either practice. Never having been awake in the surgery or having paid attention when watching from the outside, he wondered if Dr. Fraser wore her heels even when performing surgeries.

"How are you feeling, Colonel?" Dr. Fraser asked, leaning over the bed so he could see her without having to move, and Jack felt comforted by the gentle tone of her voice and the sympathy in her eyes.

Dr. Fraser had a good bedside manner, but she was not a woman who hid her feelings well. If somebody was dead, or Jack's prognosis was bad, she wouldn't manage a smile, and there would be a strange sadness in her brown eyes that didn't belong there. But she looked pretty relaxed, if a little tired, so Jack decided he and Carter must be doing okay.

Locating his voice and deciding to use it, Jack answered, "Like I fell down the last flight of stairs outside Daniel's apartment."

"You may feel that way, sir," a new voice, equally familiar and comforting to hear, spoke up, "But the way I hear it is that Daniel carried you down those stairs."

Jack turned his head to see Carter was already awake, sitting up with the support of some pillows and reading no less. He wondered how long he'd been out. One thing he'd learned about alien diseases was that the ones that took a long time to drag you down also usually took forever to recover from. The ones that hit hard and fast took more out of you, but recovery was usually faster. That wasn't a rule set in stone, but it seemed to be the case this time.

"Did he?" Jack asked, mostly to make conversation, "I think I blacked out on the stairs, came to in the truck, because I don't remember what happened between."

He was pleased to hear himself talking, and doing so clearly. His voice felt well-used, indicating he hadn't been out more than a day, more likely a few hours or so. He couldn't quite feel the ache in his bandaged hand, or in his abused knees, but he figured there must be something in the IV he'd been hooked up to. That probably also explained why everything was more amusing and reassuring than it might have been under ordinary circumstances. He felt lazy and sleepy and comfortable, and recognized the drugged feeling. He didn't try to fend it off. There was no reason to right now.

"You're lucky," Carter said, holding up a bandaged wrist of her own, "I crashed into a table and hit the concrete. Fortunately with my hand instead of my head."

"Well the sprain is on the other side, right?" Jack replied evenly, "At least now you're balanced."

From the bright, uninhibited laughter that came out of her at this remark, Jack was pretty sure Carter was also on drugs. The joke wasn't that funny, and normally she would have only smiled and said something professional like, "Yes sir," in one of her warmer, more amused tones, possibly while pretending to try not to roll her eyes.

Content with the fact that Carter was well enough to laugh, Jack turned his attention back to Fraser.

"How long was I out, Doc?" he asked.

"About twelve hours, maybe," Dr. Fraser answered, "All things considered, you were lucky. You were both brought in fast, and Dr. Jackson's team was able to retrieve the samples we needed to make an antibiotic quickly. Once we were able to identify the pathogen that caused it, developing a cure was fairly simple," she smiled softly, "I get a lot of practice at developing cures for disease on the fly."

Jack knew that was true. Anywhere else, cures for diseases usually took years to develop. Dr. Fraser often had to come up with them in hours. Granted, she didn't have to get approval to test and use her medicines, because she had standing governmental permission to do so, but Jack was still convinced that Dr. Fraser and her medical staff were the greatest doctors the Earth had ever seen. Not that he was inclined to say that out loud, particularly to her face. Wouldn't want it to go to her head.

"Well," Dr. Fraser said, "I promised Dr. Jackson that I would call when you were awake."

"Where is Daniel anyway?" Jack asked.

"He got an airman to take him home," Dr. Fraser answered.

"That's good," Carter volunteered, "He's had a long week."

"Haven't we all," Dr. Fraser tossed back, clicking her way to her office, presumably to make a call.

Meanwhile, Jack felt an inexplicable pang of worry, developing as a sort of sourness in his stomach. He knew there wasn't any reason to be worried. Obviously Daniel hadn't been hurt doing whatever it was Dr. Fraser had sent him to do, otherwise he'd be here. And clearly he either hadn't eaten the wrong fruit, or else he was immune to the effects. Jack was reasonably convinced James Chianti wouldn't be back, the man had looked completely terrified when Daniel pulled a gun on him, and he didn't strike Jack as having the balls to come back and face anything that scared him.

On impulse, when Dr. Fraser came back through, Jack asked, "How's Daniel?"

"Probably asleep," Dr. Fraser replied without concern, "I left him a message."

That made sense. In fact it was perfectly normal to have to dispatch someone to fetch a team member who'd just come off mission if they were needed because not only did they fall into sleep almost instantly (sometimes even falling into bed still fully dressed), they tended to sleep so deeply that nothing short of a hurricane would wake them.

And yet, the unease still grew, spreading from Jack's gut to his chest, working its way into his nerves despite the attempts of the drugs in his system to keep him relaxed and feeling comfy. In a way, that wasn't unusual. The last time he'd seen Daniel, things had been going to hell on a bobsled, and some part of Jack just wouldn't believe everything was alright until he'd seen all his team mates alive and well. But it stuck in his mind that this feeling of concern was not spreading itself to Teal'c, though he had not seen the Jaffa since awakening either.

Fraser had not seen Jack's growing worry on his face, and went about her business. Jack debated with himself. He told himself it was probably just paranoia, a memory of the look of fear in Daniel's eyes at the sound of James Chianti's voice, remnant of the sense of purpose and duty that had come off Daniel when he'd demanded Jack's truck keys, the lingering jangle of post-mission nerves. But he knew even as he told himself these things that they were all lies.

Life in the Stargate program had shown him a lot about strange, almost supernatural means of sensing things, such as bizarre, seemingly impossible means of transferring information and even entire personalities from one body to another, as well as the ability Carter possessed now to sense the Goa'uld. But all of that involved something alien, something from the Other Side of the Stargate.

Without needing anyone to tell him or explain it to him, Jack knew what he felt now wasn't his imagination, and it wasn't alien, and it sure as hell wasn't supernatural. Not unless instinct, and possibly a deep connection to his team counted. Jack would later be given time to wonder if maybe a part of his brain had put together the chain of events and realized something he hadn't recognized consciously, but would have if he hadn't been so druggy and recently unconscious. Perhaps, he would absently consider, this sort of thing was what people meant when they talked about the silent but heard warnings whispered by angels.

But he did not wonder now. Right now, he started working on freeing himself from this hospital prison, starting with the IV stuck in his arm. Technically you weren't supposed to remove those unless you were a qualified medical person, but Jack never had cared for technicalities.

Carter noticed, and a worried look came into her eyes, "Colonel?"

Her inquiry drew the attention of orderlies, and Dr. Fraser.

"Colonel, you're not supposed to get out of bed," Dr. Fraser said, "I need to keep an eye on you."

"Something's wrong," Jack said, successfully swinging his legs over the side of the bed and managing to get unsteadily to his feet, "I have to go."

"You don't have to go anywhere," Dr. Fraser said, obviously now concerned about his mental state, fearing lingering effects of the disease that had tried to do him in just a few hours before, or possibly a side effect of the drugs he was currently on, "You need to get back in bed and let us continue monitoring your condition."

She had arrived to block his path, a tiny woman of iron. Moving Heaven and Earth itself would be easier than forcing Doc Fraser to back down when it came to medical matters.

"Doc," Jack said, "It's Daniel. I _have_ to go."

Dr. Fraser looked him in the eyes, and seemed to see a distinct lack of madness there that puzzled her.

"Dr. Jackson is fine, he's at home," Dr. Fraser said, but in her voice there was the tone of doubt, as if perhaps she was receiving a message from an angel herself.

" _Please_ ," Jack insisted, "He's in trouble. He needs my help."

The certainty in his voice and lucidity in his gaze started to crumble her resolve. Hearing his phrasing, she did not even try to suggest that someone else could go in Jack's place. But she still looked doubtful.

"Look, I promise I'll come right back," Jack said, "I won't even try to slip out of the infirmary again before I'm released," SG-1 was notorious for escaping Fraser's clutches before she was well and truly done with them and having to be wrangled back into the infirmary under protest.

"You can't operate a motor vehicle," she pointed out.

"So I'll grab an airman," Jack replied with forced levity, seeing that he'd won.

And a pistol, he thought as Dr. Fraser stepped aside to let him go. She held up a hand to prevent the orderlies from trying to stop him as he quested about for his pants. There was a wary, almost frightened look in her eyes as she watched him, the intensity with which he'd spoken, and the strangeness in his eyes as he did so had unsettled her. Hell, Jack was also unsettled. But he wasn't questioning it now.

After he left the infirmary, Jack went straight to the locker room, retrieving the M9 from his locker. As he headed to the elevator, he grabbed a passing airman by the arm.

"Congratulations..." he quickly checked the name tag on the uniform, "McCord... you're my new chauffeur."

The young airman looked profoundly worried at this turn of events, and hesitantly held up a file he was carrying, "But, Colonel, I was told to take these directly to General Hammond without-"

He broke off as Jack snatched the file from his hands and thrust it into the surprised arms of a tech passing them in the hall, and said, "Here. Take these to General Hammond. Immediately."

Jack turned back to McCord, "There. Now you're free. Let's go."

"Uh... yes sir," the airman shakily replied, and followed Jack to the elevator, and from there to the parking lot, where Jack discovered the airman drove a dinky little sedan that rattled whenever you pushed it above about forty-five.

The drive to Daniel's apartment wasn't air conditioned, or quick, or pleasant, but Jack did not complain and McCord was too scared of him, or perhaps the drug-crazed look in his eyes, to speak without prompting. When Jack told him to wait at the curb outside Daniel's apartment, McCord only nodded, and stared owlishly after Jack as he left the vehicle and started up the stairs.

Not knowing exactly what he'd find, Jack resisted the urge to try to run up the stairs or take them two at a time. Instead, he climbed them purposefully, inwardly steeling himself for whatever he might find, hoping the drugs had cleared out of his system enough for him to do whatever he would have to. It didn't even occur to him until he was a flight and a half up that he should have considered bringing some kind of backup with him. But the instinct that told him Daniel was in trouble also told him that Daniel needed Jack, not someone else. Not right now. He let instinct continue to guide him unhindered.

Somehow Jack wasn't surprised to find the apartment door not only unlocked, but fully open. He pulled his M9, and listened cautiously. Hearing nothing, he advanced slowly through the door, turned and went down the entry hall, careful of the ridiculous short stair flights in the middle of it. He could see already that the apartment was not as he'd seen it last.

Some of the old broken junk looked more broken than it had been, and the wait had not been in vain for those things that had been precariously perched, waiting for an errant elbow to knock them off. Pictures were crooked. Jack froze for a moment as he noticed something further wrong with one of them without at first seeing what it was. Then he figured it out. The painting had a bullet hole in it, and the bullet itself had lodged in the wall behind the painting. That was new.

Jack ventured further into the apartment, but saw nothing until he came around the corner to the living room. The sturdy coffee table wedged between a pair of couches had been knocked up onto its side, leaving an open space which had been filled with a body.

It seemed Daniel was going to have to clean his rug after all, because it was soaked with blood. James Chianti lay in that blood face down, and a quick check for a pulse revealed he was no longer alive.

Jack looked around, but didn't immediately see Daniel. A second visual sweep of the place and he spotted blood on one of the plastic plants positioned on either side of the door to Daniel's bedroom/office. Leaving Chianti where he'd found him, Jack proceeded onward, not sure if he was looking for Daniel or some degenerate friend of Chianti's, so he kept his pistol at the ready.

He found Daniel perched on the edge of his bed, his head bowed and hands hanging limply between his knees, the M9 he usually kept in the closet held loosely in his right hand.

"Daniel?" Jack inquired to see if Daniel was responsive as much as to let him know he was there.

Daniel lifted his head, and Jack's heart twisted at the tortured look in his eyes. Daniel opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He managed a pained whimper, then dropped his head again and shook it, as if trying to deny reality itself. Even from across the room, Jack could see him shaking.

"Aw, Danny," Jack holstered his pistol and went across the room to sit beside Daniel.

They sat, not quite touching, and Jack made a visual inspection of Daniel. Daniel was coated in blood that had dried, which Jack suspected belonged primarily -if not entirely- to Chianti, but he couldn't be sure. He knew now wasn't the time to start checking for wounds though. If he did, Daniel in his state of apparent shock would probably resist.

Daniel's hair was damp with sweat and plastered to his head. He was still dirty from his recent mission, his clothing rumpled and torn in places, and now blood-drenched as well. The first few inches of his boots were encased in mud, and blood had splashed on them. Daniel looked pale and gaunt, and the bruise that Scar had given him on the side of his face stood out grotesquely, a rainbow of ugly colors now it had begun to heal. Small scratches marred the exposed portions of Daniel's skin, though he had mostly recovered from the bug bites he'd received and therefore had only a few red spots on his skin, which was currently unnaturally pale. In short, he didn't look good.

Finally Jack managed to pick out a tear in Daniel's jacket, the left sleeve near the shoulder, blood around its edges, that suggested a fresh wound. Still he didn't move. He could sense Daniel's mind was far distant from him, and Jack needed to bring him back from whatever cliff his mind appeared to be teetering on the edge of, and bring him back fast.

He didn't need Daniel to recap what had happened. What Jack had seen in the living room told the story plainly enough for anyone who'd participated in as many gun fights as Jack.

When Daniel had entered the apartment, Chianti must've been inside, waiting for him. Chianti had taken a shot, the one that went through the painting. Jack didn't know if that bullet had missed, or if it was the one that had grazed Daniel's shoulder. Likely Daniel hadn't been carrying. He hadn't changed clothes after his mission, but in dumping his field gear he had also put down the M9 he carried during missions, and likely the P90 he sometimes consented to bring along, leaving him weaponless. Always ready to throw himself into the lion's mouth, Daniel had probably gone right for Chianti instead of taking cover or even running away, despite there being an exit available to him.

What Jack didn't know was whether the gun had gone off in the struggle, or if Daniel had managed to take it and shoot Chianti. The glazed look in Daniel's eyes was not enlightening, and the fact that his glasses were missing (probably having skittered off under a piece of furniture during the struggle) didn't tell him much either. But Jack didn't really need to know. Whether it was an accident or on purpose, Daniel had certainly been in fear for his life, and had defended himself. But in so doing, Daniel had hit the proverbial end of his rope so hard he'd almost broken his neck.

"Life," Jack began, then paused as a thought struck him, "is just peaches and cream."

Daniel's eyelids fluttered; clearly he'd heard.

Thus encouraged, Jack concluded, "Except the cream is expired, and you're allergic to the peaches."

Daniel twitched slightly, blinked, and came up out of his daze enough that he was able to lift his head and looked at Jack, deep puzzlement in his sky colored eyes.

"I'm not allergic to peaches," Daniel said, his voice little more than a strained whisper.

Relieved that Daniel seemed to have stepped back from the precipice, Jack said, "Well let's pretend for the sake of this analogy that you are."

A thin, humorless smile appeared on Daniel's face, though it didn't reach his eyes. He knew what Jack was doing. He understood, and he was grateful for the distraction.

"Wouldn't it be more compelling if it was true?" Daniel asked, his voice rough, but louder than before.

Jack sort of wobbled his head from one side to the other.

"Maybe," he reluctantly admitted.

They lapsed into silence for several seconds, just looking at one another, each glad to see the other was alive, and that whatever damage had been done, they would manage to recover. Then Daniel's brow furrowed, and he looked down at the hand holding the gun. It seemed to take considerable effort for him to lift that hand and, holding the gun by the barrel and trigger guard, offer it to Jack. Quietly, without a word, Jack took the M9 by the grip, and checked that the safety was on.

"I'm afraid your unwashable rug will have to be replaced," Jack remarked softly, not sure if Daniel was yet ready for this macabre humor, which so often served as their shared coping mechanism.

It seemed that he was.

"Putting something on the floor you can't wash is a mistake," Daniel said, slight color beginning to return to his face as he smiled, still rather grimly but not as falsely as before.

"I told you so," Jack replied, "Nothin' but hassle. You've got perfectly good carpeting on the floor, there's no reason to put rugs you can't wash on top of it."

Daniel wasn't able to come up with a retort, but he managed a nod.

"So... uh," Jack persisted, unwilling to let Daniel start drowning again, "Where are the cops?"

"I called the SGC when... right after..." he gestured vaguely at the living room, which was mercifully beyond sight.

"Who did you call?" Jack asked, surprised, "Ol' Doc Fraser thought you were fine here."

Daniel blinked, staring at Jack without comprehension, then a faint awareness dawned in his eyes.

"I thought I heard the phone ringing," Daniel said thoughtfully, then sighed, "Anyway, I called the extension for the office at the SGC that deals with on-world crises related to the Stargate Program. Turns out they have guys lying around whose only job for us is to turn police cars around and keep them out of our way."

"Huh," Jack said, though he wasn't really surprised, most secret government operations had such a division after all.

"Then I... I guess I kind of just... came in here. I don't really remember," Daniel admitted, "I just... I guess I've been... sitting here since."

It wasn't uncommon for details and even portions of time to be lost after such a trauma, so Jack wasn't too all-fired worried about that. However...

"Look, I promised the Doc I'd be back in her infirmary as soon as I made sure you were alright," Jack said, "And I have an airman waiting in a deathtrap on wheels downstairs."

Daniel stared at him blankly for several seconds.

"Oh," he said finally, "I guess we should..."

"Go," Jack finished, "Yes, we should go. We can assign someone to come and clean up your living room when we get there. And don't worry, I'll tell them to leave your polystyrene decorations alone. Chianti's not going anywhere after all."

"No," Daniel agreed, his voice heavy, "No, he's not."

Jack got up, apparently a little too fast because a wave of dizziness hit him and he swayed. Daniel was immediately at his side, a hand gripping his upper arm firmly to steady him. Jack waited for his equilibrium to come to terms with the continued spinning of the Earth, then nodded that Daniel could let go. But Daniel didn't let go, and Jack didn't try to make him.

"Guess I'm still a little druggy," Jack admitted.

"How did you even get up the stairs?" Daniel asked, "Dr. Fraser's painkiller and sedative concoctions are enough to drop an elephant mid-charge."

"I'm not an elephant," Jack said, "So that's irrelephant."

"You _are_ high, aren't you," it wasn't strictly a question.

"I'm just glad you're not dead. Again," Jack muttered.

"Yep, you're high. C'mon, let's go."

Each put an arm around the other, and Jack wasn't entirely sure which one of them was supporting which. They stepped over the body in the living room, and made it through the door. Daniel started to turn back to lock it, but Jack shook his head dismissively.

"Who cares today?" was his assessment.

"Fair enough," Daniel replied.

They helped each other down the stairs, Jack leaning on Daniel more heavily than he'd expected to need to. But the illness had drained him, and the adrenalin and profound _need_ to get to Daniel's side that had powered him were spent. He was beyond done. Daniel wasn't much better, truth be told, and they sort of took turns supporting each other down the stairs, helping one another maintain their balance, each careful of the weaknesses and limitations of the other.

In this fashion, they made it back to McCord's car, which was right where Jack had left it.

"You weren't kidding about the deathtrap," Daniel observed, opening the passenger door in front to let Jack get in, before climbing into the back of the vehicle.

"Mmm," Jack grunted, mostly so that McCord wouldn't know what question he was answering.

"Where to now, sir?" McCord asked, looking from Jack to Daniel as if he wasn't sure which of them he was asking, or if either of them was in any condition to answer.

"Beam us up, Scotty," Jack replied.

McCord's eyes widened in surprise, and he looked back at Daniel.

"He means back to the SGC," Daniel clarified.

"Oh," McCord nodded worriedly, "Yes sir."

As McCord started the engine, Daniel leaned forward and put a hand on Jack's shoulder.

"What?" Jack asked, turning his head to look at Daniel.

"They're still Polistes Exclamans, by the way," Daniel said.

Now McCord looked worried about _both_ of them.

" _Of course_ they are, Danny," Jack replied, "Of course they are."


	18. Epilogue

"I still can't believe Dr. Fraser let you out first," Jack complained.

He may have promised not to try to escape early, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to whine about it. Somewhat to his surprise, Daniel was here for that. For whatever reason, Daniel had overcome his usual aversion to hospitals, and had so far spent hours listening to Jack gripe about the nurses, the food the nurses brought, and the fact that he was bound by honor not to escape ahead of schedule.

Between times, they played cards. Carter, also still infirmary-bound, would sometimes join them, but mostly she was either reading or pretending she wasn't working on a project remotely via notebook or laptop. Today, however, she had finally wiggled her way out from under Dr. Fraser's thumb. Actually, Carter had escaped the infirmary, and was probably well enough that Dr. Fraser wouldn't have the orderlies drag her back. That meant that, for the moment, Jack was the only patient being kept here. That was technically a good thing, because it meant nobody was seriously ill or injury. But it was also a lonely thing, and Jack was inexpressibly grateful for Daniel's company.

" _I_ got hit by a bullet," Daniel reminded him, " _You_ got an alien disease."

"Bullets still kill people last I checked," Jack argued.

"Not when they barely graze your shoulder. Scar did more damage than the bullet."

"Speaking of," Jack said, "How is that jerk anyway?"

"Still a jerk," Daniel replied with a nod, "But... I think it'll be worth it."

"Did you ever figure out what they wanted?"

"I asked Ginger," Daniel answered, "And she said something kind of like... 'you wouldn't understand.'"

Jack nodded, not the least bit surprised.

"Who got saddled with that assignment anyway?" Jack asked.

On account of his injury, Daniel had been required to teach a crash course of Howler linguistics to a team who then had to go out and face talking to the monkeys without him. Daniel had been getting regular reports from them, and they read like the team thought they were being punished for something, only they couldn't figure out what. Jack found them extremely amusing. Daniel seemed disappointed in the team's lack of ability to see the importance of what they were doing.

"SG-9," Daniel answered, in a tone that inquired 'who else?'

"Remind me to send them a sympathy card," Jack said.

"The Howlers weren't _that_ bad," Daniel protested.

"Please," Jack groaned, rolling his eyes.

"No, I'm serious," Daniel said, "Remember that planet a few months ago where they tried to drown Teal'c?"

Jack grunted noncommittally.

"The planet with the Linvris? That was a _fun_ time," Daniel continued with sarcasm, having suffered the worst time of any of them except perhaps Teal'c on that one.

Jack frowned, but refused to concede the point.

"Svoriin," Daniel said simply.

"I'll never see bugs the same way again," Jack admitted.

"The Keeper's planet?" Daniel persisted.

"Eh..."

"What about the prison planet? I not only got to experience what it was like to be nearly choked to death by a guy who should have been named something absurd like Tiny, we freed a mass murderer."

"You're just a little ray of sunshine today, aren't you?" Jack asked.

"Look, all I'm saying is those were all way worse than what the Howlers did," Daniel concluded.

"The fruit didn't almost kill _you_ ," Jack said.

"No," Daniel muttered, "But I did almost get my arm torn off."

He didn't remind Jack that particular incident had been caused in part by his taking Jack's advice, but Jack flinched anyway.

"Anyway, much as that would've sucked," Daniel said, pretending not to notice Jack's reaction, "it's not the worst thing that's ever happened off-world."

In the lapse of conversation that followed as Daniel slid the playing cards out of their box and tried to shuffle them without disturbing the still healing injuries on both arms before giving it up and handing the deck over to Jack, the silence itself seemed to speak, to say what Daniel couldn't. Regardless of wind, weather, men, monsters, imprisonment or torture, for Daniel there would only be one worst mission, and they both knew which one that was, so there wasn't any need to say it aloud.

"Yeah," Jack said quietly, staring at the cards as he dealt them, "You're right."

"Yeah," Daniel agreed quietly, sipping from the thermos of coffee he'd brought with him, and making a face that suggested someone in the mess would be hearing from him, "Sometimes that sucks too."

There was increasing evidence to support Carter's theory about the origin of the Howlers, and the device's part in it, but there was so far nothing to suggest that there was any way to reverse the genetic alterations. Not after so many generations. Carter thought that might have been what the Howlers were hoping for all along, but Daniel had doubts that anyone really understood what the Howlers wanted; not even the Howlers themselves seemed clear on it.

"Daniel," Jack said suddenly, "Why don't you go home? You don't have to be here. I know you hate hospitals just as much as I do. So what are you doing here?"

"What? I can't keep a friend company?" Daniel asked, implementing a forced smile that barely reached his lips and sure as hell didn't make it all the way to his eyes.

Jack just gave him a stern look, and waited.

Daniel sighed, pretending to be sorting the cards in his hand, "The, uh, rug..." he cleared his throat, "Couldn't get the blood stains out of it. So I... uh... I threw it away."

" _You_? You threw something away?" Jack asked in disbelief.

"Yeah," Daniel said quietly, "And now there's a... a big... empty spot in my living room. And... I don't like... walking across it. Or looking at it. Or looking at something else to avoid looking at it."

Jack sighed as comprehension dawned. This wasn't the first time Daniel had killed, but it was one thing to kill the enemy in the field, or even to make a mistake that got an innocent killed. It was quite another when the killing ground was your own living room, and the dead a monster from your own past.

"Have you ever thought of owning an actual house?" Jack asked.

"What?" Daniel looked up, startled.

"I mean it. A little place somewhere closer to work, further from the neighbors, easier to keep the cops out of next time you have a home invasion... fewer stairs... Or," Jack continued, "You could just keep hiding at the SGC. Teal'c doesn't seem to mind living here. I mean, you already come here on two thirds of your days off to be close to your precious artifacts, it's not like it'd be-"

"No, it's not a bad idea," Daniel interrupted, "It's just... I.. I actually had thought of it."

He did not add that he was surprised Jack had thought of it, though they both knew that's what he meant. Jack, who had planted himself firmly in a cabin by a pond with no fish, and had every intention of remaining there until he died in a permanent fashion. Jack, who abhorred the idea of moving house, regardless of how many unhappy memories it might be filled with. But Daniel wasn't like Jack.

Jack smiled crookedly, "Well, after I get outta here, I have some time off coming up. What's say I help you move all your stuff?" _Again_ , he did not add.

"I'd like that," Daniel said, looking as if a tremendous weight had just been lifted off him.

Jack knew it wasn't the prospect of moving all that junk by himself that made his spirit quail at the thought, it was the reality of having to face all those memories by himself. Jack knew, because he'd done it himself a time or two. In a way, that was part of his aversion to moving. If you didn't move, you could put the painful memories into a closet and... while not forgetting them, just sort of... leave them there. But it went against Daniel's nature to hide, even from painful memories. Which told Jack that the pain Daniel kept in that apartment must be worse than he'd suspected, otherwise Daniel wouldn't be hiding out at the SGC.

"That still doesn't explain why you're hanging out in the infirmary," Jack pointed out, "You've got an entire lab full of lovely knickknacks that probably need dusting or something."

"I do," Daniel replied, then sighed and looked Jack in the eye for the first time since they'd started playing cards, "But you came with me to face a monster that you didn't ever have to see; the least I can do is visit you in the hospital."

"And lose at cards," Jack pointed out, having won four out of five games they'd played in the last week.

"And lose at cards," Daniel chuckled agreeably.

They were quiet for awhile, just playing cards and enjoying each other's company.

Finally, Daniel broke the silence, quietly saying, "Thanks, Jack."

"For what?" Jack asked, knowing Daniel wasn't talking about the offer of help moving out of his apartment.

"For coming after me."

"Anytime, Danny. Anytime."

* * *

 _ **A/N: Hope you all enjoyed the story, thanks for reading (and reviewing), goodnight everybody.**_


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